California’s COVID emergency ends Tuesday as LA County considers ending local declaration

California’s coronavirus emergency declaration officially comes to an end Tuesday, but the change is not expected to have too much of an impact on people.

This comes nearly three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared COVID-19 a public health emergency. Since then, Newsom has lifted most restrictions, such as mask requirements, beach closures and business shutdowns prompted by the pandemic.

Given that, the emergency declaration’s end is more of a symbolic marker for the state.

Locally, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider a motion that would end the county’s emergency declarations enacted by COVID-19. However, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer says it doesn’t mean all infection control measures will immediately disappear.

County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s motion, if approved by the board on Tuesday, would end the proclamation of a local emergency and the proclamation of a local health emergency on March 31.

Hahn notes in her motion that the emergency declarations “saved lives and protected the health of county residents.” But it notes that thanks to the widespread availability of vaccines, therapeutics and other measures to combat virus spread and illness, “hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 have dramatically reduced.”

“Over the last three years, the county has developed the tools to continue to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 without exclusively relying on the use of the extraordinary powers afforded by the various emergency proclamations and declarations,” Hahn’s motion states. “The county’s sustained preparedness, infrastructure and available tools in combating COVID-19 demonstrate that it is time to evaluate the county’s readiness to terminate both the county’s proclamation of local emergency and declaration of local health emergency for COVID-19.”

Ferrer said her agency will be reviewing existing health officer orders, noting that some of the requirements in them were enacted under the county’s emergency declaration and would be lifted if the board removes the declaration at the end of March.

“So by the end of March, some of the health officer orders that were written here in L.A. County by Dr. (Muntu) Davis (the county health officer), would in fact need to be changed if they are going to continue, because some of them were done under an emergency declaration,” Ferrer said. “There are other health officer orders that aren’t done under emergency declaration.

“… A health officer always has authority to mitigate the impact of communicable diseases,” she said.

One of the mandates that would be lifted would be a requirement that people who are exposed to COVID-19 wear a mask for 10 days. Ferrer said public health officials will be reviewing data to determine whether that requirement will continue under a revised health order.

Meanwhile, the the federal COVID state of emergency is set to end in May.

City News Service contributed to this report.