'It will probably have its most meaningful impact on the day-to-day lives of Californians at the county level.'
and surrender the emergency powers he has held for over two years, the governor's office announced this week.
Those emergency powers have typically been associated with statewide restrictions such as business closures and mask mandates, but for the past year,much less controversial items such as hospital capacity and vaccine sites. The statewide indoor mask mandate in place during last winter's omicron variant-driven wave was in fact issued by the California Department of Public Health , and in November of last year, California Health and Human Services Secretarythat CDPH could implement mask mandates even in the absence of an emergency declaration.
Ghaly argued that a line in California's Health and Safety Code that reads,"upon being informed by a health officer of any contagious, infectious, or communicable disease the department may take measures as are necessary to ascertain the nature of the disease and prevent its spread," gives CDPH broad powers that could survive court challenges to mandates issued in the absence of an emergency declaration.
So, in theory, yes, California could easily bring back statewide restrictions such as mask mandates in the future, even without a state of emergency. Yet it's worth pointing out that the state did not issue any restrictions in the spring and summer of 2022 — even as the BA.2 and BA.5 omicron subvariants drove increases in case rates — suggesting that the bar for new statewide restrictions is much higher than it used to be.
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