The City of Philadelphia is reinstating its indoor mask mandate amid rising COVID-19 cases. The mandate will be enforced starting Monday, April 18, making Philadelphia the only major city in the country with a public masking requirement.
City health officials said last week that if the COVID-19 situation were to continue to trend in the same direction, then the city would move from the Level 1 all-clear response to Level 2, which requires masking in indoor public places.
"Today, we're reporting that we're averaging 142 new cases every day," Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said in a press conference Monday. "Today's case count is more than 50% higher than what we saw 10 days ago. So we know that cases are rising fairly quickly."
The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 is still low, she said, at 46. "So today, I'm announcing that we have reached the threshold for moving out of the 'All Clear' COVID response level and into the 'mask precautions' level.
She said the city will allow a one-week "education period" to give time to get the word out.
Listen to the full announcement here:
Based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s levels of transmission, masking is currently only recommended in 19 counties in the entire country. That does not include the Philadelphia region, which is part of 95% of the country where transmission is considered low.
And, Philly is not yet close to reaching the point where the CDC would recommend masking for most people.
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Bettigole said the hope is that, by having people masked up in indoor public spaces, the city can get ahead of the next wave and avoid reaching a peak like in January with the omicron surge.
Current trends in Philadelphia are not as dramatic as that. Cases are less than 5% of the numbers seen back in early January.