Montgomery County, Md., will reinstate its indoor mask mandate on Saturday, less than a month after lifting it and days before neighboring D.C. is set to relax its own masking rules. Most of Northern Virginia has recommended but not mandated masks since May.
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A sustained increase in coronavirus case rates automatically triggered the change in the Maryland suburb this week, eliciting conflicting feelings that highlight tensions shaping the return to normalcy even in a community with one of the highest vaccination rates in the nation.
Some business leaders said the “bouncing ball” effect of Montgomery’s shifting regulations made it onerous to operate, while others said they felt relieved to have the strength of county law again while enforcing masking mandates in their retail and restaurant establishments.
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Public health experts largely agreed that bringing back the mandate is the right response to rising infections, especially ahead of the holiday season, where people are more likely to travel or interact in large groups.
“It’s unfortunate, but it’s very much the right thing to do,” said Neil Sehgal, an assistant professor of health policy at University of Maryland. “Lifting these preventive strategies was never meant to be exit-only doors.”
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The county, where 1,730 residents have died from coronavirus infections, is acting in line with federal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 78 percent of Montgomery’s population is fully vaccinated, marking the highest rate in the metropolitan region.
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But over the past week, its case rate climbed from 45 new infections per 100,000 residents to 60, bringing it into what the CDC considers to be a “substantial” level of community transmission and in need of an indoor mask mandate. The District, which is only 64 percent fully vaccinated, had an even higher case rate of 89 as of Friday. “In this instance,” Sehgal said, “Montgomery County got it right and the District is getting it wrong.”
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Governments will eventually have to let individuals decide what level of coronavirus exposure they are willing to take on, but now is not yet the time, said Crystal Watson, a senior associate and an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The delta variant is still burrowing its way through the eastern coast of the United States, infecting — and killing — scores of people, Watson added. Governments should take more conservative approached to lifting mask requirements to avoid “bouncing back and forth” on regulations, which can instill distrust or disinterest among the public, she said.
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“There continues to be confusion among residents and especially from those visiting from outside the county, as to whether a mask mandate is in effect or not in Montgomery,” said Marshall Weston, president and chief executive of the Restaurant Association of Maryland.
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Kathy Hollinger, president of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, said she was disappointed that Montgomery’s mandate was returning so soon after it was removed. Restaurant employees across the suburb have already had to spend plenty of the last two years as de facto enforcers of the county’s masking and social distancing mandates, policing diners and sometimes facing hostile pushback.
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“People need to remember, these are not small businesses made up of enforcement officers,” Hollinger said. “They are small businesses made up people who are ready to operate a restaurant.”
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For some establishments, however, the return of Montgomery’s mask mandate is helping to dispel anxieties around winter, which last year brought about the most severe surge in cases.
Carmen Larsen, president of the Montgomery County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said most restaurants and retail outlets within the group chose to retain mask requirements even when the county rule was lifted. Losing the “cover” of a government mandate sometimes made it harder for staff to implore patrons to abide by shop rules, she said.
“In a sense, it’s a relief that it came back in, just so they don’t have to be the bad guy,” Larsen said of the public policy. Businesses would rather impose a mask mandate now than to face the kind of draconian lockdowns faced from earlier on during the pandemic, she added.
County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said on Thursday that if it were left up to him, he would have kept the mask mandate consistently in place until mid-January, when most of the 5 to 11-year-olds in the county are expected to be fully vaccinated. But under current regulations set by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Elrich cannot make that decision. It falls instead on the county council, which has attached the lifting and the reinstating of the mask mandate to case rates over seven-day periods.
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“This is the problem of people picking numbers,” said Elrich, who, unlike other regional leaders, often declined in earlier months of the pandemic to set fixed thresholds for public reopening. “If you achieve a number, does it sustain itself? And when it doesn’t, what then?”
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The council amended its regulation to lift the mask mandate permanently once 85 percent of the 1.1 million county residents are fully vaccinated, which is likely to happen in five weeks or so, said council vice president Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large). The change in policy is confusing, he noted, but in Montgomery, where residents have largely embraced testing and vaccinations, he thinks pushback will be minimal.
Dan Simons, an owner of the Farmers Restaurant Group, which operates in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, said he doesn’t think one local approach to masking mandates has been superior to others, but the lack of coordination has been the most challenging to navigate. During the daily shift meetings, restaurant managers have to go over specials and reservations, as well as the latest updates in pandemic measures, he said.
Yet Simons is “fortunate that our team has made it through. For those of us around and still alive, maybe we’re lucky to have rules to be annoyed by.” The most challenging months, he thinks, are over.