Park said the state government organization voted earlier this month to update its guidelines that will also go into effect Tuesday.Įmployees working in a room may take of their masks if they are all vaccinated and showing no COVID-19 symptoms, Park said. Mask requirements for the workplace must follow a different set of guidelines set forth by Cal/OSHA. She says those who are unvaccinated attending any mega events will also be required to wear a face covering. If you’re unvaccinated, you’ll still be required to wear a mask indoors in most public places, though it’s not entirely clear if or how that will be enforced.įace coverings will also still be required in some settings regardless of vaccination status, Park said, such as health care, youth activities, schools, public transportation, cooling centers, long-term care facilities and homeless shelters. The county is still lagging behind the state in vaccination rates at nearly 45% of those eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine being reported as fully inoculated and just over 10% for those partially vaccinated. The state reports an average vaccination rate of nearly 55% of eligible residents fully vaccinated and just over 11% who still need a second dose. "Our case rate is amongst the lowest of all the states it remains one of the lowest nationwide," she said. County's improved COVID-19 metrics are also a reflection of a statewide trend, Park said. "But at this point, it's looking very good using the data we have now." However, there's always a possibility that we will be receiving more death certificates, and that that will have to be updated," Park told the board at its meeting Tuesday. "It appears that in the last couple of weeks that we've had no deaths. Maggie Park reported the decrease in death rates earlier this week to the Board of Supervisors, as well as continued improvement in the county's testing and positivity rates. “We also want to make sure communities most affected by emissions are getting the air quality benefits of reducing CO2.County Public Health Officer Dr. “As the world gets more serious about mitigating climate-warming CO2, we need metrics to let us know if we’re doing a good job of reducing it,” Hopkins said. Then they could use measurements of the grass in that area to measure the success of that action. However, these measurement systems cannot offer neighborhood-scale observations needed to inform policies intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately, climate change.įor example, cities could decide to reduce their carbon footprint by restricting vehicle traffic on a particular road or closing down another known source of emissions. In addition, existing satellite or urban tower networks can measure CO2 in more economically developed cities. It’s less expensive and lets us measure in new locations that weren’t previously possible.” “Grass already got the CO2 out of the air and did a lot of the work for us. “People traditionally measure radiocarbon in the air by collecting large, 2-liter flasks of air, which you then have to take to a lab and extract. The researchers have found that using wild grasses offers several advantages over other techniques. However, the city’s 19th Avenue, where traffic was redirected, showed a big increase in fossil fuel CO2 based on radiocarbon content in the grass.Ĭloseup of wild grass sample used to understand the distribution of fossil fuel emissions in California. Since the city’s Great Highway remained closed to cars until the end of 2021, it retained its low emissions levels into 2021. “Other likely factors include the number of low-emission or electric vehicles in an area, and distance from industrial warehouses, with heavy big-rig traffic.”ĭrilling down further, the study detailed emissions levels on specific roadways in San Francisco. “We believe many of the differences we saw can be attributed to how many people are able to continue working remotely,” Hopkins said. Both the Los Angeles metro area and Pasadena had bigger pollution rebounds than the coast, or than the state as a whole. The team’s grass samples revealed that coastal Orange County retained their pandemic-related reduction in emissions, and that San Francisco has fared better than Los Angeles. “Plants absorb CO2 during photosynthesis and incorporate it into their tissues, recording a snapshot of local fossil fuel inputs in the process,” said study lead Cindy Yañez, formerly of UCR, now an Earth System Sciences doctoral student at UC Irvine. Graduate student Cindy Yañez taking inventory of plant samples mailed in by community scientists for radiocarbon dating.
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