Philadelphia is reinstating mandatory underwear masks as the number of COVID-19 cases increases across the region.
The Philadelphia Department of Public Health Restoration announced the mandate Monday, offering residents and businesses a “one-week training period” to prepare for the change.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, more than 275,000 city residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 5,000 have died from the virus. Currently, 76.9 percent of adults in Philadelphia are fully vaccinated, while nearly 94.7 percent have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
Philadelphia has four COVID-19 Response Levels. The city is currently at level 2, indicating that the average number of new cases per day is less than 225, the number of hospitalized is less than 100, and the number of cases has increased by more than 50 % from last ten days. At level 2, masks must be worn indoors, but there are no vaccination or testing requirements for areas where food and drink are served.
In the newspaper, Liberate Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenny said the city’s response levels “allow us to be clear, concise and predictable in our response to local COVID-19 conditions.”
“Given the recent increase in cases, we are moving to level 2 in hopes of avoiding higher incident rates and more stringent measures,” Kenny said. “Our city remains open; We can still walk in our daily lives and visit the people and places we love while indoors with a mask. “I am optimistic that this step will help us control the case rate.”
On Sunday, Dr Anthony Fauch, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that COVID cases were coming back and urged people to evaluate their personal risk of infection.
“He can’t be fired and he can’t be fired,” Fawy told ABC this week. “What will happen is we will see that each individual has to calculate the amount of risk they want to take.”
Fauch believes the increase in COVID cases is due to the arrival of masked and vaccine mandates from the states and the arrival of the delta-micron hybrid known as the BA variant.2.
“I hope Congress will come and give us the resources to prepare ourselves with the tools we need to solve this problem,” Fauci said.
Source: Huffpost
