PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio, AP) — Effective immediately, following a Board of Health vote Thursday, Philadelphia's indoor mask mandate is rescinded — just days after it took effect.
"Due to decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts, the city will move to strongly recommend masks in indoor public spaces as opposed to a mask mandate," a spokesperson told KYW Newsradio in a statement. "Given the latest data, the [Board of Health] voted to rescind the mandate."
Masks will continue to be required in health-care settings and congregate settings such as nursing homes and shelters. And schools may set their own mask policies.
Businesses and other institutions are allowed to be more strict than the city, and some may yet require proof of vaccination or require everyone to wear a mask. And, though there is no mandate, people are permitted to wear a mask in any setting they choose.
Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, told the Board of Health at a public meeting Thursday night that hospitalizations had unexpectedly gone down 25% in a matter of days.
"We're in a situation that we really had not anticipated being in this soon but it is good news," she said, according to a transcript of the meeting. "So I'm really very happy ... to say it appears that we no longer need to mandate masks in Philadelphia and that we can actually move to simply a strong recommendation."
The city released a statement Friday morning saying case counts rose steeply between the end of March and mid-April, hitting a peak of 377 cases on April 14, but now cases have leveled off with an average of 242 per day, and hospitalizations in the city have fallen to 65 over the course of the week, as of April 21.
Philadelphians taking care of themselves
Philadelphia is not only dropping its mask mandate, it’s doing away with the response level system it was using to determine the risk level for COVID-19. Health officials say it’s no longer necessary because residents are taking precautions on their own.
Bettigole says that shortly after the city announced, last week, that the mandate would return because of rising case counts and hospitalizations, an unusual thing happened: Cases leveled off and hospitalizations began decreasing as soon as the city announced the elevated risk level -- even before the mandate actually took effect.
She says this is a new phenomenon and a sign that Philadelphians, in particular, have become adept of interrupting new waves of infection.
"In each of the previous waves of COVID that we’ve seen, we’ve seen cases rise. And that’s been followed by a rise in hospitalizations. If you look at what’s happening in the states and counties around us, that’s what we’re seeing. If you look at what happened in Philadelphia, our cases were rising steeply and then they flattened. So something different is happening in Philadelphia. People are paying attention, and we’re seeing that in the data."
Bettigole says the city will continue to watch the data and let residents know when there are signs of elevated risk, but she believes another mandate is unlikely.
Swinging with the pendulum
Residents and businesses in Philadelphia are reacting to the quick mask mandate flip-flop.
At The Volstead by Unity, a vegan restaurant in Manayunk, manager Jesse Andreozzi was caught off guard.
“I just feel like it was a little unneeded. Our staff is fully vaccinated. Most of them are boosted too. And then our clientele is mostly vaccinated as well," he said.
He says they ordered extras ahead of the mandate’s enforcement at the beginning of the week.
"It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The numbers didn’t skew that bad that they should flip like that and people didn’t want to do it anymore.”
Those masks may yet come handy. Anyone who wishes to mask up can still do so, especially their staff.
“Couple of them still do. People have immunodeficiencies or other reasons. They’ve avoided it for two years and they don’t want to catch it now,” he said.
"It’s not gonna go away. We’re just gonna have to live with it. But I think it’s at a manageable number, and I feel safe going out."
Eliot, who will continue to mask, says the frustrating part is the mixed messaging from different entities.
“People are like, they can’t make up their minds," he said. "But they can make up their minds, they’re just not acting in sync.”
Philly was an outlier with the mandate, but he says he’ll continue to do what he feels is best and safe.
“I’m gonna do what the CDC says, plus wear a mask on SEPTA, because you’re in a tin can with a bunch of people.”
'We have to move past COVID'
Back on April 11, when the health department announced on April 11 that it would reimpose the mask mandate, Bettigole cited a more than 50% rise in confirmed cases over the preceding 10 days -- the threshold at which the city's guidelines called for people to wear masks indoors. On that date, Philadelphia's daily cases were only about a quarter of what the CDC considers to be high, but Bettigole said the city's health department was being more stringent than the CDC general guidance to forestall a potential new wave driven by an omicron subvariant.
"If we fail to act now, knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations, and then a wave of deaths, it will be too late for many of our residents," Bettigole said at the time.
No other large city in America had taken such a step. The city faced fierce blowback as well as a legal effort to get the mandate thrown out. Few masks were worn at the Philadelphia 76ers' home playoff game on Monday, even though they were required under city rules.
The restaurant industry had pushed back against the city's reimposed mask mandate, saying workers would bear the brunt of customer anger over the new rules.
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Several businesses and residents filed suit in state court in Pennsylvania seeking to overturn the renewed mandate. The Board of Health's vote to rescind the mandate came after board members met in private to discuss the lawsuit.
"We were very pleased to see Philadelphia make the correct decision to rescind the mask mandate," said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Thomas W King III, who was among those involved in last year's successful legal challenge to the statewide mask mandate in schools.
Shortly before news broke that the mandate was ending, the issue came up during Thursday night's debate among the three leading Democratic candidates seeking the party's nomination for Pennsylvania's open U.S. Senate seat. Notably, two of them, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia, came out against the mandate.
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"We have to move past COVID," said Fetterman, adding that "we have to live with this virus, and I don't believe going backwards with a mask mandate or with closures is appropriate."
U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb of suburban Pittsburgh said he hated wearing masks, but thought Philadelphia officials were "trying to do what's best for everybody."
Most states and cities dropped their masking requirements in February and early March following new guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that put less focus on case counts and more on hospital capacity and said most Americans could safely take off their masks.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, said it is appealing a judge's order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs. The CDC asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.
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