The state of New York, epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, has decided to drop the mask indoors, at a time when the number of contaminations is plummeting in the United States.
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The measure announced Wednesday comes on the heels this week of other Democratic-led states when most Republican states have never put such a requirement in place.
As of Thursday, the fourth most populous state in the country (some 20 million inhabitants, including almost nine million in the megacity New York) will no longer impose the wearing of masks in enclosed places – shops, restaurants, theaters, companies – announced Wednesday to the press Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul.
But this obligation is maintained in schools, nursing homes, social and detention centers and it will be up to each municipality – including the one in New York – and each business to impose it or not on its administrators and customers, Ms. Hochul said.
Thus, in the famous Broadway music halls in the heart of Manhattan, “we maintain the obligation of the mask and the vaccine in all theaters until April 30,” Charlotte St. Martin, who chairs the Broadway League.
The mask also remains mandatory on public transport – trains, subways, buses, airports – which are subject to federal legislation.
To justify her decision, Kathy Hochul prided herself on “declining” health indicators in a state and a city that were the epicenter in 2020 of the pandemic, with at least 38,000 deaths in two years in the megacity alone.
The Governor welcomed a “magnificent picture” in terms of health.
“We are not done (with COVID-19), but the trend is very, very well oriented and that is why we are now considering a new phase of the pandemic,” she promised.
However, the wearing of masks has always been well respected by New Yorkers traumatized by the epidemic: every store displays sketches of masked faces and you need a vaccination pass and an ID to consume a simple coffee sitting.
The state of New York follows in the footsteps of California, Oregon, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Massachusetts, US states on the West and East coast, which have announced since Monday the lifting of the mandatory wearing of masks indoors or in schools.
Measures that, on the other hand, have never been imposed in Republican states, such as Florida and Texas.
In fact, the mask is a very strong political marker in the United States, where the obligation to cover one’s face is considered a violation of individual freedoms by a large part of the right and the Republican party.
The latter is also well placed to check the pawn of the Democratic party of President Joe Biden during legislative elections in November that will renew part of the Congress in Washington.
Narrowly re-elected last November once morest a Republican, the Democratic governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy announced on Monday the end of compulsory face masks in schools from March 7. The same applies in Connecticut from February 28 and in Delaware – the residence of President Biden – for places closed from Friday and in schools on March 31.
It was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, chief executive of the huge and very populous California (40 million administrated), who hit hard on Monday: no more mandatory mask indoors for all residents vaccinated as of February 15.
He cited “a contamination rate down by 65% since the peak of the Omicron variant”. Similarly in the neighboring state of Oregon, the mask will no longer be mandatory on March 31.
Contaminations in the United States are in freefall with just under 250,000 cases a day on average over seven slippery days, according to health officials. Far from the peak of 800,000 cases reached in mid-January. However, on February 4, the country crossed the 900,000 COVID-19 deaths mark in almost two years, according to Johns Hopkins University. The threshold of 800,000 deaths had been passed in mid-December.
At the federal level, there is no question yet of lifting the restrictions, but “the time will come when COVID will not disrupt our daily lives,” assured the coordinator of the fight once morest COVID-19 at the White House, Jeffrey Zients, on Wednesday.
