WASHINGTON – People in the United States capital are again required to wear masks indoors whether they have been vaccinated or not, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced yesterday as Covid-19 caseloads are surging across the country.
Starting at 5am Saturday, all Washington, DC residents over the age of 2, regardless of their vaccination status, will be required to wear masks while in indoor public spaces, according to the new mandate, Xinhua reported.
“Things have changed throughout the course of (the pandemic), and we have to adapt, too,” Bowser said at a news conference.
“I think it won’t be a big lift for a lot of folks,” she added, noting some people in the District, which had one of the most strict mask mandates during the pandemic, had never stopped wearing masks indoors.
In addition, officials are working to create a vaccination requirement for DC government employees.
Providing an update on the District’s virus data at the news conference, DC Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt cited a five-fold increase in July thus far in DC’s daily case rate.
Virus rates have particularly increased for children aged 5 to 14 and young adults aged 20 to 34, according to the director, who added that many new cases have been linked to travel, dining out, and social activities in large groups.
The new mask requirement came one day after the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classified the nation’s capital into the category of “substantial” Covid-19 transmission localities, up from the “medium” category.
For areas with “substantial” transmission possibilities, the CDC recommends masks indoors regardless of vaccination status.
Per the CDC metrics, “substantial” transmission occurs in any locality that reported 50 to 100 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past week, or is reporting a test positivity rate between 8% and 10%.
According to the CDC’s website, as of Wednesday, DC’s seven-day case rate per 100,000 residents was 58.09%, and the seven-day test positivity rate was 2.59% as of Tuesday. – Bernama, July 30, 2021
