Seattle is reinstating a universal mask mandate for large outdoor concerts or sporting events in an effort to control the spread of Covid-19 in the city and surrounding county.
Effective September 7, masks will be required at any outdoor event with more than 500 attendees, King county health officer Jeff Duchin announced on Thursday. The order applies to anyone aged 5 years and older, regardless of vaccination status.
The health department’s order also “strongly recommends” face coverings be worn in all other outdoor settings where people cannot keep six feet apart from individuals who are not part of the same household.
King county, in which Seattle is located, is home to more than 2.2m residents, making it the most-populous county in the state of Washington and the 12th-most populous in the US.
The latest surge of Covid-19 infections, propelled by the Delta variant, is taking “a heavy toll on hospitals and the healthcare system”, public health officials said. Although King county has “some of the highest vaccination rates of any large metro area” in the US, officials said there are about 750,000 people who are not vaccinated, including children under the age of 12.
“Every day, large numbers of hospitals are reaching out to the Washington Medical Coordination Center. In the past few days, nearly 60 per cent of the calls have been Covid-related,” Dr Steve Mitchell, director of emergency services at Harborview Medical Center, said in a statement. “Capacity and staffing issues in hospitals are widespread and consistent across the state.”
Washington’s neighbouring state of Oregon last month reinstated a mask mandate for public outdoor settings. The stringent rules set the pair apart from other US states that have thus far targeted indoor settings, if at all.
The two states are both dealing with record levels of Covid-19 hospitalisations, despite having some of the highest levels of vaccination coverage in the US. Washington (60.4 per cent) ranks 9th in the US in terms of the share of its population that is fully vaccinated, while Oregon ranks 12th (58.1 per cent).
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