PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia is the first major U.S. city to bring back an indoor mask mandate. The Department of Public Health moved forward with the decision based on standards it set, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the level of community spread in the city to be “low,” and indoor masking for most people is not recommended.
Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole announced Monday the city will move from COVID-19 response Level 1, “all clear,” to Level 2, “mask precautions.”
In order to move up a level, the city must meet two out of three criteria that were established by the health department.
The 142 new cases a day fall between the 100 cases that top Level 1 and the 225 cases that cap Level 2. That also represents a 50% increase in the last 10 days. Hospitalizations were the one metric not reached. The health department said 46 people were in the hospital with COVID-19, which is not only below the Level 2 cap of 100 but the Level 1 limit of 50.
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The CDC, however, has a different method for tracking response levels. Indoor masking is only recommended for most people who live in areas considered to have “high” levels of community spread.
Currently, the CDC considers 96% of the country — including Philadelphia, the suburbs, New Jersey and Delaware — to have a “low” level of transmission. A little less than 4% are “medium,” and only 19 counties, close to 0.6%, are considered “high.”
The agency looks at three metrics to determine where a community stands:
• New COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 population in the past seven days
• The percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients
• The total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 in the past seven days
Based on that criteria, the CDC classifies Philadelphia’s community level as “low,” since average new cases are below 200 a day and hospitalizations are very low.
In response, Bettigole said the city's decision has to do with "local conditions."
"The CDC has been clear in messaging now and previously that local conditions do matter," she said. "I think we've all seen here in Philadelphia how much our history of redlining, history of disparities has impacted, particularly our Black and brown communities here in the city. So it does make sense to be more careful in Philadelphia than perhaps in an affluent suburb."