Philadelphia to restore indoor mask mandate

PENNSYLVANIA－Philadelphia became the first major city in the United States to reinstate its indoor mask mandate on Monday after reporting a sharp increase in coronavirus infections, with the city's top health official saying she wanted to forestall a potential new wave driven by an Omicron subvariant.

Confirmed COVID-19 cases have risen more than 50 percent in 10 days, the threshold at which the city's guidelines call for people to wear masks indoors, said Cheryl Bettigole, Philadelphia's health commissioner. Health officials believe the recent spike is being driven by the highly transmissible BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, which has spread rapidly throughout Europe and Asia, and has become dominant in the US in recent weeks.

"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," said Bettigole, noting that about 750 Philadelphia residents died during the wintertime Omicron outbreak. "This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic, to put our masks on until we have more information about the severity of this new variant."

Health inspectors will begin enforcing the mask mandate at city businesses on April 18.

Most states and cities dropped their mask requirements in February and early March following new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that put less focus on case counts and more on hospital capacity.

Philadelphia ended its indoor mask mandate on March 2. Separately, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi tested negative for COVID-19 on Monday after tested positive last week.

Agencies via Xinhua