Protesters call for ending Los Angeles County's indoor mask mandate

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that the state will likely have to live with COVID-19 for years if not forever, but the battle for mask mandates continues.

Protesters Friday brought their message to the county Department of Public Health building in downtown Los Angeles. They demanded an end to the mask mandates.

"It's time to unmask," said one parent who asked to be identified as Alex L.

Protesters tossed hundreds of masks outside the department's building to say they feel fed up.

"We want them to align with California in general," the L.A. Uprising founder Ross Novie said. "It's one of the only counties that forces indoor masking still. They're following their own science even though we see states and cities across the nation changing and dropping these mask policies."

This comes as the governor announced a new plan moving to an endemic policy as we live with COVID-19.

Meanwhile, outraged parents in Chino Hills voiced their concerns and frustrations with school district board members after they turned down an effort to ease the mandate requiring students to wear masks in the classroom.

"We are done with this nonsense," one parent said at a Chino Valley Unified School District forum.

The school district says it aligns itself with regulations put in place by the state, which still require masks inside K-12 classrooms.

"The numbers don't even make sense to do this to our children anymore so it really should just be a choice," said parent Sonjia Shaw.

This comes as the Los Angeles Unified School District announced on Friday that it will drop its COVID-19 mandate that students and staff wear face coverings while outside on campuses this coming Tuesday.

RELATED: LAUSD to lift outdoor mask mandate for students, staff Tuesday

Some students across California and L.A. County have grown frustrated of the mask mandates in schools.

"Let masks be a choice in schools," a student said at the Chino Hills forum.

"Endemic doesn't mean that people cannot die," said Dr. Daisy Dodd, an infectious disease specialist with Kaiser Permanente in Orange County.

Dodd says young children still can't get the vaccine and that masks in schools are important.

"And that's really what we're doing, we're minimizing the transmission of the virus from one person to the other," Dodd said. "It is important to remember that although you have been immunized, you still can carry the virus in your nostrils and we have a lot of people that are still susceptible."