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Riverside County, California Sheriff Chad Bianco said that his officers have been seeing success in seeking voluntary compliance with guidance that individuals wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
His comments came after video surfaced in Philadelphia where law enforcement forcibly removed a man from a bus because he wasn’t wearing a mask. In Bianco’s county, residents face potential fines for not wearing masks.
“It applies to everyone in the county,” he said on “Cavuto Live.” “But we in law enforcement, especially in this county … and even our surrounding counties are taking the same approach where we’re trying to get voluntary compliance.”
He added that his deputies weren’t “actively” searching for people who left their homes without masks. “For the most part in Riverside County, we are getting compliance when we ask,” he said.
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Host Neil Cavuto asked Bianco if mitigation efforts were working in his county. “I guess they have,” Bianco replied. “We’ve been lucky that our — the numbers that they projected in the beginning, which, to me, were astronomically high, obviously we didn’t hit those.”
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California’s top public health official said for the first time Friday that the coronavirus might not be as devastating as state officials had feared and Gavin Newsom revealed his administration now is planning for how to reopen the state.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said models state officials have created to track the virus had been showing a peak by the middle of next month but the picture has improved as people limited their movement.
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“Our peak may not end up being as high as we actually planned around and expected,” Ghaly said. “The difference between what we are seeing today in our hospitals may not be that much different than where we are going to peak in the many weeks to come.”
California has more than 21,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 600 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, figures far lower than New York, where the infections have been most prevalent and deadly.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
