Somerville poised to bring back indoor mask mandate on Friday

Somerville is poised to become the largest community in Massachusetts to reimpose an indoor mask mandate this summer, amid a rise in COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

The city’s Board of Health is scheduled to vote on an order proposed by Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone last week to once again require indivduals over the age of 2 to wear face coverings in indoor public settings, regardless of their vaccination status, during a meeting Thursday evening.

If approved, the mandate will take effect Friday.

Somerville officials say that the details of the indoor public mask mandate are expected to “mostly mirror” the previous city and statewide order, which were both rescinded on May 29 at a time when the vaccines had driven down COVID-19 rates.

However, city officials say the new mandate would only apply in indoor public spaces. The proposed order would not require face coverings in outdoor areas.

“Now that the Delta variant is driving cases back up, we are asking the community to join together and break this cycle again,” Curtatone said in a statement last week. “Putting on a mask indoors in public is easy to do.”

The move comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended last month that all individuals in counties with high COVID-19 transmission wear masks indoors, amid evidence of waning vaccine protection and the rise of the delta variant. Based on the CDC’s criteria, everyone in Massachusetts should be wearing a mask indoors.

However, only a few communities —  including Salem, Lexington, Belmont, Provincetown, and Nantucket — have reinstated indoor mask mandates, and Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration is recommending that only unvaccinated or particularly vulnerable individuals wear masks indoors.

During the height of the pandemic, Somerville took a notably cautious approach to relaxing COVID-19 rules, and Curtatone suggested that reimposing the mask mandate could help avoid additional restrictions.

“We’re not cutting back at this moment on what people can do and we’d like to avoid that,” he said.

“But we do need to recognize how to do things safely in public settings,” the mayor continued. “There are people of all ages for whom this disease still poses a real threat and the simple act of wearing a mask when you’re inside a public space can help prevent this disease from spreading to them.”

While nearly 80 percent of the entire Somerville population is at least partially vaccinated, city officials noted that “anyone can still get the virus and spread it,” and that masking up indoors is an extra step to protect those who can’t get the vaccine and others who are medically vulnerable to the disease.

“Again, the vaccines are highly effective in preventing serious cases of COVID-19, even with the variants,” Doug Kress, Somerville’s health and human services director, said in a statement. “That is why it is vital for everyone to get their vaccine. Until we have the overwhelming majority of our population vaccinated, the potential for this virus to do serious harm will persist.”