Philadelphia will require people to mask up in indoor places once again starting next week, citing an uptick in COVID-19 cases due to the omicron subvariant BA.2.
It is the first big city to reimpose a mask mandate since the last remaining ones were lifted starting in February. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health made the announcement on Monday, just over a month after lifting its mandate for indoor public places.
“Due to increasing COVID-19 cases, @PhiladelphiaGov will move to Level 2: Mask Precautions beginning today. In order to provide a one-week education period for businesses, masks will be required in all indoor public spaces as of Monday, April 18, 2022,” the department said.
Mandatory masking will also return in schools and child care settings, as well as restaurants and government buildings. Philadelphians who see a business violating the mandate have been encouraged to report it to 311.
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The city’s COVID-19 mitigation measures are implemented based on the threat of transmission, which is broken into four different threat levels. The city’s latest stats put it at level two, which says at least two of three criteria must be met — that average daily cases are less than 225, hospitalizations are less than 100, and cases have increased by more than 50% in the previous 10 days.
“As COVID cases rise in Philly, we want to protect our most vulnerable residents. Wearing a mask around others is an easy way to do that. The sooner that we can stop this wave, the sooner we can get back to Level 1,” the department said.
The seven-day daily average number of cases in Philadelphia is 142 as of April 8, and city officials have recorded a 60% increase in case counts over the past 10 days, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Still, masking, required or not, has increasingly become unpopular. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that the vast majority of people can safely go mask-free, though CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said that people will have to be flexible when it comes to wearing them as new variants arise.
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The BA.2 variant has not yet caused a significant uptick in cases. In fact, case numbers are at their lowest since the lull in spring 2021 before the delta variant’s onslaught began in the summer. Hospitalizations have also maintained a steady decline since late January, when the original omicron variant began showing signs of abating.
“We were expecting this, right? Because we saw this in Europe a few weeks ago,” White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said about an uptick in cases. “We got to be careful, but I don’t think this is a moment where we have to be excessively concerned.”
