Raleigh to keep indoor mask mandate. Mayor cites rise in COVID cases, omicron concerns
Raleigh’s mask mandate will stay in place for all indoor, public spaces for now due to a rise in COVID-19 cases and concerns about the omicron variant, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said Friday.
Baldwin had recently asked city staff to evaluate whether Raleigh could lift the requirement to help gyms, small businesses and those who have been struggling with their mental and physical health.
After reviewing local and national COVID trends, however, Baldwin said she decided now is not the right time to relax the mask mandate.
Baldwin said discussions about relaxing masking requirements began when cases and hospitalizations were declining, and COVID metrics were trending in the right direction.
“The COVID spike after the Thanksgiving holiday, combined with concerns over the omicron variant, require that we must remain cautious,” Baldwin said in a news release.
Now, city officials are expecting an additional spike in cases after people gather for Christmas and New Year’s, a trend that Baldwin said “we have witnessed after every holiday since the pandemic began.”
She said she will continue to monitor data on a weekly basis.
“I am committed to ensuring public health and safety and am also mindful that we need to get our businesses — small and large — back to normal as soon as possible,” Baldwin said.
Cases increasing in Raleigh
During a City Council meeting earlier this month, Baldwin said she had heard from business owners who were struggling under the mandate, not sure they would make it until next year.
At the time, Baldwin said the city would wait until two weeks after Thanksgiving to see if COVID cases rose before making a decision.
In addition to Raleigh, five other Wake County municipalities (Garner, Knightdale, Morrisville, Rolesville and Zebulon) are under the county’s indoor mask mandate, which also applies to unincorporated areas.
Stacy Beard, a county spokesperson, told The News & Observer last week that the mandate would stay in place until the county reached a moderate transmission level, as measured by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In order for that to happen, Wake will need to meet two key benchmarks: a trending positivity rate below 5%, and a seven-day average of fewer than 50 cases per 100,000 people.
As of Friday, Raleigh remains far from that level. The city is currently seeing roughly 187 cases per 100,000 people, a number that has increased by 6% over the last seven days, according to county data. The city’s current positivity rate is 5.1%.
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This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 2:25 PM.
