SAP Center Hosts 1st Concert After Lifting Of Santa Clara County Mask Mandate
SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) – Indoor mask mandates have been lifted in Santa Clara County, which meant those attending the Justin Bieber concert at SAP Center on Wednesday night were not required to mask up.
Anthony Flores, who brought his daughter to the concert, told KPIX 5, "I don't really know what to make of it, it's rather sudden."
Flores went on to say they're not ready to take their masks off quite yet. "There's still COVID out there, my daughter is in school. I work with youth and families too, and we have elders that we're around with all the time, so we chose to be more safer than sorry," he said.
While Santa Clara County is the last in the Bay Area to drop its indoor mask mandate, other cities including Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia will be dropping their masking order this week. Meanwhile, Los Angeles County is expected do so on Friday.
The loosening of mask rules comes as President Joe Biden announced a new COVID plan to include a monitoring plan to detect variants. During the State of the Union address, Biden also announced a test and treat program to give antiviral medication on the spot to those that test positive.
Many said they are finally seeing the shift from a pandemic to an endemic.
Joanne Frowein, who also attended Wednesday's concert, said, "We're a moving as a society to living with this and all being safe so I'm really glad to see that it's kind of back to normal."
While the mask mandate was lifted, attendees were still required to show proof of vaccination or a negative test for events with 1,000 or more people. The Frowein family is thrilled to go maskless to a concert again.
"We're going to go in and have a really good time and we can sing along to Bieber and not have to worry about a mask," she said.
