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Dr. Sundari R. Mase, who led Sonoma County’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, acting as its chief medical officer and top health policy authority through a deadly and politically explosive global crisis, is set to step down from her post next month.
An infectious disease expert who joined the county at the outset of the pandemic in early March 2020, Mase is resigning effective April 7, according to a two-sentence email she sent Friday to the Board of Supervisors. It gave no additional information about her decision to step down.
Mase, 56, who declined to be interviewed Friday, issued a statement saying it had “been an honor“ serving as health officer for the past three years.
“I came to Sonoma County just as the COVID-19 pandemic started, and I am leaving knowing that we’ve done the best to protect the community and save lives,” she said in the statement.
Mase credited her public health team and their “tireless” pandemic-era efforts.
“I am proud of the work that we did here, and I truly believe I am leaving the county in a healthy place,” she said. “I am also proud of all the community relationships that we have built and I am optimistic that they will continue after I leave.”
As health officer, Mase, who answers to the Board of Supervisors, used broad state-established authority during the pandemic to issue stay-home orders, limits on public gatherings and mask mandates that dominated the county’s response to the crisis.
Those measures, though widely adopted by other Bay Area counties, and elsewhere, nevertheless proved deeply unpopular at times, exposing Mase to stiff public criticism.
Opponents said the county’s response weighed too heavily on individual rights. Business interests, especially, complained it was ruinous for the local economy.
Mase was regularly quick to point out that many of the public health mandates were being imposed by the state and she did not have the authority to issue more lenient rules, only harsher ones.
Many health officers across the state and nation left their posts under the withering pressure.
Tina Rivera, the county’s health services director, and Mase’s direct supervisor, applauded her work through the worst of the pandemic.
“Her work has been incredible,” Rivera said. “We can’t understate the leadership she provided as she navigated us through the pandemic.”
She noted that Mase, along with other county health officials, has been subjected to “ridicule and scrutiny that still goes on and that takes a toll.“
For Mase, who is of Indian descent, some of the verbal attacks were overtly racist.
“Some of the things that have been said in public meetings about her, no one should have to put up with,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Coursey.
The crossfire came even from the top echelons of county government.
In May 2020, then-Sheriff Mark Essick shocked fellow county leaders when he said his deputies would no longer enforce Mase’s public health order, thrusting the county into the explosive national debate over limits on liberty and commerce amid the pandemic.
Essick reversed course after a four-day feud with the Board of Supervisors, but the fallout hit Mase, whose leadership had been undermined by the county’s top lawman even as the outburst sealed his own political fate.
Rivera, who said she was surprised by Mase’s announcement, said she learned of the resignation the same time the supervisors did. She said she was not informed of the reasons driving Mase’s resignation.
Those who worked closest with her praised her work.
Dr. Gary Green, a local infectious disease expert with Sutter Health, said Mase adhered to the COVID-19 science that defined the crisis.
“It is with great gratitude that I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Mase, and that she rescued our county in the early part of the pandemic,“ Green said in a text message Friday.
“We owe her our deepest thanks. I am certain she saved countless lives with her recommendations and her integrity to follow the science,” Green said. “I feel great sadness that she will be moving on. She will always be an extraordinary colleague, and I hope we keep in touch.”
Coursey, too, said he was sorry to learn of Mase’s resignation and called her a “valuable asset to the county.”
“I truly believe she has saved lives over the last three years in Sonoma County,” he said.
Mase earned $282,450 in 2021, the latest year for which full county pay records are available.
She is the latest in a string of top county administrators to leave their positions.
Chris Godley, the county’s emergency management director, is leaving his role at the end of March, and Sheryl Bratton, the former county administrator, left at the beginning of the year for a position with Napa County.
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