Face covering ordinance expires in Decatur
City of Decatur officials have dropped the mandate for face coverings when inside public buildings and businesses.
The expiration of the face covering ordinance on March 2 marks the end of the mandate which had been in place since 2020. Decatur was the only city in DeKalb County that reinstated a mask mandate due to a rise in COVID-19 cases after an eight-week period in the summer of 2021 when masks were not required.
At a special called meeting on March 2, Decatur City Manager Andrea Arnold said the recommendation to allow the face covering ordinance to expire came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidelines to “help communities assess risk.”
“The CDC changed the emphasis from the number of new (COVID-19) cases to the impact the virus has on local hospitals systems. Specifically, they’re measuring new covid-related hospital admissions, including the percentage of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients,” said Arnold. “With this new criteria, DeKalb falls into the low risk level and the CDC does not have a recommendation for face coverings.”
Arnold said city officials have tracked data for the past two years to make recommendations about COVID-19 mitigation efforts to city council members.
“Every week we’re looking at occupied ICU beds, the number of (positive) cases per 100,000 people and we look at data in DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties because a lot of people who come into Decatur may also live in these surrounding counties. We also track employee positive cases and what is known as the reproduction rate for the virus,” said Arnold.
Before city council members voted unanimously to allow the ordinance expire, Mayor Patti Garrett stated that businesses continue to have the right to ask patrons to mask up.
“This doesn’t prohibit individual businesses from making their own decisions,” she said. “If individual businesses feel like they need to protect themselves and their employees with masks, that’s within their right to do so. No one in Decatur is taking it lightly when it comes to making these decisions.”
Arnold said that Georgia’s low vaccination rate still makes the city vulnerable, and a strong emphasis should be put on encouraging those who are can be vaccinated against COVID-19 to do so.
“According to the Georgia Department of Health, as of Feb. 17, 55 percent of Georgians and 58 percent of DeKalb residents are fully vaccinated. That is shamefully low behind the national average of 69 percent of people who are fully vaccinated. We need to continue pushing for vaccinations and testing sites to be readily available,” Arnold said.
For more information, visit www.decaturga.com and www.cdc.gov.
