The Palm Springs city council voted Wednesday to require COVID-19 vaccinations or proof of a negative test to go inside restaurants, bars or attend large events.
The mandate will go into effect in three weeks, but six private establishments will be putting the rule into place this weekend. The city council also voted to bring back a mask mandate for all indoor public places during the emergency meeting.
The move came after cases doubled in the city over the past week, to levels 27 times higher than six weeks ago.
There are also rising concerns over the Splash Music festival bringing thousands of visitors to Palm Springs during the last two weekends of August.
The surge in cases, driven by the Delta variant, is happening throughout the inland region. Riverside County hospitals saw their number of COVID patients increase by five times from July 1 to August 1, while in San Bernardino County hospitalizations increased by three times.