New Havers can again smile at each other inside a store or office without breaking the law starting March 7, as city officials announced an upcoming partial end to an indoor mask mandate.
Mayor Justin Alicker and health director Maritza Bond made the announcement at a Friday afternoon press conference.
For one week from Monday, people inside shops, restaurants, gyms and other non-governmental public places will no longer be required to wear masks.
The requirement will remain the same in schools and municipal government buildings.
From this coming Monday, the state will no longer require students and staff to wear masks in schools; The decision is left to the municipalities. Alicker said the low vaccination rate, coupled with the presence of the medically vulnerable, informed his decision to uphold the mask mandate in schools. According to Alicar, only 31 percent of students ages 5 to 11 have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine; Of the 12- to 17-year-olds, 62 percent received the first dose (55 percent received the second dose).
In non-government public spaces, "people can choose to go in or not," Aliker said, while students and teachers and people doing business in city government offices may have less leeway.
The announcement coincided with a sharp drop in New Haven Covid-19 cases, fueled by Omicron Edition. Bond pointed out that New Haven is seeing about 12 cases per 100,000 citizens per day, which is 96 percent less than the height of the Omicron increase.
The announcement came a day after Hamden canceled its COVID-19 mask mandate altogether. States and cities across the country are relaxing as part of a pivot to view Covid-19 as "endemic" rather than a "pandemic", a long-term disease that society will learn to live with rather than eradicate.
And New Haven's announcement came the same afternoon as the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued new guidance for local officials to consider issuing pandemic-related mandates. The new guidance relies more than previously on hospitalization rates, which have fallen in New Haven and across the country. It seeks to steer the society towards the "new normal". The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in New Haven County (including Waterbury and Milford) fell to 65 on Friday, the governor's office announced; That number includes patients who have either not been vaccinated or who happened to test positive for the coronavirus but have come to the hospital for other reasons.
Alikar was asked why the partial lifting of the mandate starts early, rather than starting from March 7. For two reasons, he said: The city wants to monitor the data to make sure it's "moving in the right direction." And new CDC guidance was issued at 3 p.m. Friday; Officials want to investigate this in depth.