People in Philadelphia could be excused if they felt a sense of whiplash Friday–as the city abandoned its indoor mask mandate just days after becoming the first U.S. metropolis to reimpose compulsory masking in response to an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
City officials who had previously stressed the need to head off a new wave of coronavirus infections by requiring people to mask up indoors abruptly called it off after what they said was an unexpected drop in the number of people in the hospital and a leveling-off of new infections.
The city had taken plenty of heat for the renewed masking order–with a lawsuit already filed and two of the three leading Democratic candidates for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat expressing opposition to it at a debate Thursday night. But city officials insisted Friday their decision was about the data, not any external legal or political pressure.
‘I had said when I announced this that if we didn’t see hospitalizations rising, that we needed to rethink this and that we shouldn’t have a mandate. So that’s what we’re doing today,’ the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, said at a virtual news conference on Friday.
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