Just hours after Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the end of DC’s indoor mask mandate, Montgomery County officials announced that the county’s indoor mask mandate will be return on Saturday.
According to health officials, the county has seen seven consecutive days of “substantial transmission” of coronavirus. As of Tuesday, November 16, the county reported about 60 people per 100,000 have tested positive over the past week. The seven-day average positivity rate is 1.7 percent, compared to Maryland’s statewide rate of 3.38 percent.
Earlier this month, the county council removed the mandate was transmission fell below 50 positive cases per 100,000 people. But, just two dates after, the county was already seeing substantial transmission again. Since then, the number of positive coronavirus cases have been continuously fluctuating, putting the mandate in limbo.
Before becoming Research Editor, Damare Baker was an Editorial Fellow and Assistant Editor for Washingtonian. She has previously written for Voice of America and The Hill. She is a graduate of Georgetown University, where she studied international relations, Korean, and journalism.
