Travelers might have to hold on to their face masks for a while longer. As the daily number of reported Covid-19 cases is moving upward again in the United States, driven by the highly transmissible omicron BA.2 subvariant, at least one major U.S. city is bringing back its mask mandate.
The percentage of Americans who say they always wear a mask in public has dropped to just 23%, its lowest level since April 2020, according to tracking data from the University of Washington in Seattle. Notably, vaccinated Americans are more than twice as likely (70%) as unvaccinated Americans (32%) to report wearing a mask in public places regularly, per data from the Pew Research Center.
At the same time, testing has also significantly dropped off, so getting a handle on a true number of daily infections has become more difficult for officials. According to the University of Washington’s latest estimate, the true number of daily infections is likely to be nine times higher that what is being reported. That enormous gap amounts to roughly 282,531 Covid cases going unreported just today.
Also factored into the mix is that, from coast to coast, most cities and states have eliminated indoor mask mandates, leaving the decision on whether or not to wear a mask up to individuals.
In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed vaccination and indoor masking mandates to expire at the end of February, and the city health department stopped reporting daily Covid case numbers in March. Within weeks, outbreaks in the nation’s capital resulted in some very high-profile Covid-positive cases among Cabinet secretaries and Congress members along with Mayor Muriel Bowser herself. And last week, two prominent universities in the D.C. area — Georgetown and Johns Hopkins — reinstated mandatory masking and testing requirements due to a rise in positive cases among students.
A surge of new infections in New York City has also impacted Broadway theater, where mask and vaccine policies will remain in effect through at least April 30. Some performances of “Plaza Suite” and “Macbeth” were canceled after cast members tested positive for Covid-19.
Rising Covid infections led Philadelphia officials to reinstate its mask mandate today. Just five weeks ago, the City of Brotherly Love dropped its indoor mask requirement. But as Covid-19 cases ticked upward, the city health department has decided to put the brakes back on.
“This looks like we may be at the start of a new Covid wave, like Europe just saw,” Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, the city’s health commissioner said at a news briefing. “I suspect that this wave will be smaller than the one we saw in January. But if we wait to find out and put our masks back on, we’ll have lost our chance to stop the wave.”
Dr. Bettigole said the city has met the threshold to trigger a return to mandatory indoor mask-wearing. Today Philadelphia moved from ‘Level 1: All Clear’ into ‘Level 2: Mask Precautions.’ The city meets two of three criteria per the city’s guidance necessary to trigger the mask mandate.
The first criteria is that the average new daily Covid-19 cases is above 100. The number of new daily cases jumped significantly from 94 per day last week to 142 this week. Second, cases has increased by more than 50% in the previous 10 days. The third criteria, the only one not met, is that the number of Covid-related hospitalizations does not exceed 100. The city is currently reporting 46 hospitalized cases.
Meanwhile, the federal mask mandate for air travel and public transportation that has been in place since February 2021 is due to expire one week from today, on April 18. Speaking on the Today Show this morning, White House Covid-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said keeping the mandate in place “is absolutely on the table.”
The mandate has been a polarizing topic, with 21 states suing the federal government to end it. Last month, the chief executives of the seven U.S. airlines — Alaska, American, Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue, United and Southwest — wrote to President Biden asking him to end the mask mandate.
But surveys suggest that the majority of Americans support keeping the requirement. Six out of 10 Americans (60%) support extending the mask mandate, according to a Harris Poll Covid-19 tracking survey fielded in early April. Nearly a third of Americans (32%) say they “strongly support” extending the mask mandate for travel, compared to 19% who “strongly oppose” doing so.
Last month, a Morning Consult survey also found that 60% of US adults believe travel and hospitality companies should require customers to wear masks—though that was down from 71% in January, at the peak of the omicron surge. Notably, those who plan to travel within the next three months are more likely to support keeping face mask mandates in place.
“Throughout the entire pandemic, we’ve wanted to make decisions based on the evidence and science, and that, I expect, is what we’ll do again this week,” Jha said, stressing that the final decision will be up to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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April 11, 2022 at 10:56PM
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Mask Mandates Are Coming Back In Some Places—And May Be Sticking Around For Air Travel - Forbes
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