Philadelphia’s new indoor mask term will begin next week. Credit … Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times
With low levels of new coronavirus cases but a sharp rise in recent days, the city of Philadelphia announced Monday that it will renew its indoor mask mandate just over a month after its removal, becoming the first major city in the United States to do so.
“This is our chance to anticipate the pandemic,” Cheryl Betigol, the city’s health commissioner, told a news conference. She acknowledged that the average number of new daily cases, currently 142, is still not close to what it was at the beginning of the year, when the Omicron variant pushed the seven-day average to nearly 4,000.
But she said that if the city fails to demand masks now, “knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations and then a wave of deaths, then it will be too late for many of our residents.” . Last week, the city said the number of Covid-19 deaths had exceeded 5,000.
The mandate will take effect next week. A spokesman for the city’s health department said it would end when the number of cases and percentages fell below a certain threshold.
The solution comes when cases are ticking across the country, fueled by the highly transmitting Omicron sub-variant known as BA.2. While the national increase is relatively small so far – about 3% in the last two weeks – the growth of cases in northeastern cities such as New York and Washington is much faster. Some northeastern colleges, including Columbia, Georgetown and John Hopkins, have reinstated indoor mask mandates in recent days.
Speaking at a virtual press conference Monday afternoon, New York Mayor Eric Adams said he would follow the advice of his health team in deciding to reinstate the mask mandates, despite a positive test on Sunday’s growing virus case in the city. and the Philadelphia decision.
“I am not special as mayor. “What happens to me personally should not determine how I make policies,” Mr Adams said. This must happen to the city of New York.
“I feel good, I don’t have a fever, I don’t have a cold, I don’t have pain,” the mayor said, adding that with his medical history of diabetes, “I probably would have had different results if I hadn’t been vaccinated and strengthened.”
According to Covid’s Philadelphia response plan, mitigation measures are triggered when caseloads or case trajectories exceed certain thresholds. Since the beginning of March, when Omicron quickly withdrew, the city has been at level 1 or “everything clean”, which means that most mandatory measures – including mandates for indoor masks as well as requirements to prove vaccine in restaurants – have been lifted. Masks are no longer required in urban schools, although people who visit hospitals or ride public transport still have to wear them.
The indoor mask mandate is automatically restored when the city rises to level 2, where the average number of new daily cases and hospitalizations is still low, but “cases have increased by more than 50 percent in the previous 10 days”. A health spokesman said the average number of news items had increased by nearly 70 per cent in the past 10 days.
The Philadelphia system “allows us to be clear, transparent and predictable in our response to the local conditions of Covid-19,” Mayor Jim Kenny said in a statement after the announcement. “I am optimistic that this step will help us control the number of cases,” he added.
The city’s decision contradicts the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Based on its designation of hospital admission, among other criteria, the CDC believes that Philadelphia has a “low” level of community and thus does not recommend the necessary disguise.
Asked about the difference, Dr Betigol emphasized that “local conditions are important” in making these decisions and highlighted inequalities in the impact of the virus. “We’ve all seen here in Philadelphia how much our history of red lines has affected us, the history of differences, especially our black and brown communities in the city,” she said. “So it makes sense to be more careful in Philadelphia than, you know, maybe in a wealthy suburb.”
Jeffrey C. Mace contributed to the report.
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