With 84.3% of Santa Clara County residents over 12 years old completely vaccinated, local health officers are preparing to transition toward lifting COVID-19 restrictions, a county press release read. 

On Thursday, health officers from eight Bay Area jurisdictions — including Santa Clara — agreed on a set of criteria to lift health orders for indoor mask requirements in public spaces:

• The area must have been in the yellow COVID-19 transmission tier as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for at least three weeks.
• COVID-19 hospitalizations in the area must be consistently low. This criterion must be approved by the county’s health officer.
• 80% of the county’s total population must be fully vaccinated, or a COVID-19 vaccine must have been authorized for emergency use for 5- to 11-year-olds.

If all of the above are true within Santa Clara County, health officer Sara Cody ’85 may lift indoor masking requirements. This lift will pertain to areas that are not subject to state and federal masking rules. 

These criteria are released two months after the county announced an order requiring face masks indoors for everyone regardless of vaccination status. This also came a day before Friday, when Stanford authorized indoor parties to resume.