Erie County has officially reached 'substantial' COVID-19 transmission with a rate of 54 new cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days, the Erie County Department of Health reports.

Starting Saturday, July 31, anyone who enters an Erie County-owned building or facility must wear a face mask, regardless of vaccination status. This applies to all employees, vendors and visitors, regardless of vaccination status. Employees who enter other non-county owned buildings while on-the-job must wear a mask in those facilities as well.

The Erie County health department also highly recommends that all owners of private establishments open to the public require mask wearing for all employees, guests and patrons.

"Even with significantly fewer diagnostic tests being done, we have seen a sharp increase in new daily case totals," said Commissioner of Health Dr. Gale Burstein. "Regardless of vaccination status, wearing a mask is one way to reduce the risk of disease transmission. We continue to recommend that people stay home when sick and get a diagnostic test if you experience symptoms or are a close contact of case."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highly recommends people who are in substantial or high risk zones wear masks indoors and maintain social distancing regardless of vaccine status and fully vaccinated people can still carry the virus and can still catch it, although they are less likely to get seriously ill or die.

"This is not good," Poloncarz said. "And we were hopeful that we would be able to crush COVID by getting so many people vaccinated that we’d have herd immunity. We don’t have herd immunity in the community, we don’t certainly have herd immunity in the country."

Poloncarz said students and teachers in Erie County will continue to wear masks on the bus, in class, and on the playground as no one under 12 is eligible for the vaccine.

About 72% of Erie County residents over the age of 18 are fully vaccinated.