Marin County’s COVID-19 case rates have more than doubled in the past 10 days and are now the highest in the Bay Area. But the county, which has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, is not seeing a rise in hospitalizations or deaths — illustrating what is perhaps the region’s clearest example of vaccination successfully preventing the worst COVID outcomes.

The county is shifting to hospitalizations, instead of case rates, as its main metric to form pandemic response policies, health officer Dr. Matt Willis told county supervisors Tuesday. This includes the criteria to reimpose indoor mask mandates in stores and other public settings — a mandate that Marin lifted on Nov. 1.