Philadelphia announced it is reinstating its indoor mask mandate beginning April 18.
Students will be required to wear masks in schools when they return from spring break.
All public places will require masks due to ‘rising Covid cases,’ Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole announced on Monday.
According to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, there are 142 Covid cases as of April 8 and 44 people were hospitalized because of Covid, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
By resuming the indoor mask mandate, city officials hope to stave off another surge in hospitalizations and deaths that could accompany the current case increase that appears to be caused by the BA.2 omicron subvariant.
“If we fail to act now, knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations and a wave of deaths, it’ll be too late for many of our residents,” Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said during a briefing Monday.
Bettigole noted that 750 Philadelphians died in three months over the winter during the omicron wave.
“We don’t know if the BA.2 variant in Philadelphia will have the kind of impact on hospitalizations and deaths that we saw with the original omicron variant this winter,” Bettigole said. “I suspect that this wave will be smaller than the one we saw in January.”