California Lifts State’s COVID Mandates on Health Care Facilities and Providers

California has lifted all government-enforced COVID protocols, which includes not requiring healthcare professionals to wear masks, and allowing local management to implement their own protocols. The lifting of mandates began on April 3, 2023.

People in California can now enter healthcare facilities, even high-risk locations such as elderly care centers, correctional facilities, and places serving people experiencing homelessness, without a mask as per new guidelines issued by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).

In March of 2023, CDPH issued updated guidelines outlining the new policy. According to the guidelines, healthcare workers are also no longer required to get vaccinated.

CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Tomás Aragón expressed gratitude and commended Californians for taking COVID protocols seriously and managing the pandemic. Aragón stated, “Our communities did a lot of the hard work by getting vaccinated and boosted, staying home, testing when sick, requesting treatments when positive, and masking to slow the spread. With these critical actions and a lot of patience and persistence, we have now reached a point where we can update some of the COVID-19 guidance to continue to balance prevention and adapting to living with COVID-19.”

When the pandemic first began in March 2020, California was the first state to mandate masks. Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement at the time, “The State of California is deploying every level of government to help identify cases and slow the spread of this coronavirus.”

During the pandemic, Newsom issued a stay-at-home order and made mask-wearing mandatory. However, Californians became frustrated with the long-term mandate and pushed back, especially parents who opposed the school mask mandate. The school mask mandate was defended by Dr. Larry Kociolek, a pediatric infectious diseases physician and researcher at Northwestern University, who considered face masks essential in protecting children at schools.

In October 2022, Newsom announced the end of the state of emergency concerning COVID-19.