Philadelphia Reinstates Indoor Mask Mandate
The Philadelphia Department of Public Health announced Monday that it will reinstate the city’s indoor mask mandate, just over a month after lifting it.
Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole said the department will allow a one-week education period for businesses, with masks required in all indoor public spaces, including schools and child care settings, business, restaurants and government buildings, as of April 18.
“This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic,” Bettigole said at a news conference.
The average number of daily new cases is low — just 142 — but is on the rise. By contrast, the city began this year with a seven-day average of nearly 4,000 cases as the highly-contagious Omicron variant spread like wildfire.
Philadelphia is the first major city to reinstate its mask mandate. The decision goes against guidance issued by the CDC, as the city currently has a “low” Covid-19 community level under the agency’s parameters, which take into account hospital admissions and other benchmarks. Areas with a low community level are not advised to require masking under the CDC’s new guidelines.
Bettigole defended the city’s decision, saying that “local conditions do matter” in making such decisions.
“We’ve all seen here in Philadelphia, how much our history of redlining, history of disparities has impacted, particularly our Black and brown communities in the city,” she said. “And so it does make sense to be more careful in Philadelphia, then, you know, perhaps in an affluent suburb.”
The mask mandate comes as the city reaches its “Level 2” designation under its Covid-19 response plan. The city had been at “Level 1” since the beginning of March, a designation that means most mitigation measures, including indoor mask mandates and proof-of-vaccination requires in restaurants can be lifted.
However, Level 2 means that average new daily case counts and hospitalizations are low but “cases have increased by more than 50 percent in the previous 10 days.” A spokesman for the health department told the New York Times that over the past 10 days, the average number of new cases had risen nearly 70 percent.
Level 2 automatically triggers a reinstatement of the mask mandate.
