Mecklenburg County’s mask mandate will likely remain in place for at least the next couple of weeks, county health director Dr. Raynard Washington told county commissioners Tuesday evening.
“I do not feel comfortable and I cannot recommend that we, at this time, make any changes to the mask mandate,” Washington said. “But I am comfortable saying that I do believe in the next several weeks we’ll be in a better place.”
Washington told commissioners that he thinks Mecklenburg County is “coming out of the worst of the omicron surge” of the coronavirus. New cases in the county have been decreasing and hospitalizations appear to be leveling off or slightly decreasing, Washington said. But he emphasized that COVID-19 numbers are still high: The county has a roughly 29% test positivity rate and around 600 people in the hospital with COVID-19.
“We’ve seen in other areas, where they’ve acted too soon because things were getting better–as opposed to waiting until we actually get down the infection peak all the way,” Washington said.
County commissioners voted to reimpose Mecklenburg’s mask mandate in August amid spiking COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations because of the delta variant. The rule requires everyone older than 5 to wear masks indoors in all businesses and establishments. Currently, to remove the mandate, the county’s test positivity rate must fall below 5% for seven consecutive days.
But the recommended metrics to get rid of the mandate could be changing, Washington told commissioners.
“We are looking very closely at all of this so that we can properly make recommendations to you all — as our metrics are changing, as testing numbers are changing — so that we can make clear recommendations to you all in a couple weeks,” he said.
Commission chair George Dunlap said commissioners will wait for a recommendation from county health leaders before making any changes to the mandate.
“These are the people that we’ve hired to keep this community safe,” Dunlap said.
“If you want to know when the mask mandate will be done away with, it’s when we get a recommendation from our professionals that say that would be in our best interests.”
Gov. Roy Cooper allowed North Carolina’s statewide mask mandate to lapse in late July, though he also urged residents and school districts to follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about wearing masks inside.
