Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced that, starting Friday, Virginians will be required to start wearing face coverings inside public places to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The Democratic governor also said that Northern Virginia, Accomack County and the city of Richmond will enter phase one of reopening by Friday.
“I am taking this step because science increasingly shows us that the virus spreads less easily when everyone is wearing face coverings,” Mr. Northam said Tuesday at a press conference.
Face masks are required to be worn inside any place where people can congregate, such as public transit, in businesses and government buildings.
He said exceptions will be made for exercising, people eating and drinking in restaurants, people who are unable to wear a mask because of a health condition and children under the age of 10. However, Mr. Northam, a licensed pediatric neurologist, urged children over the age of 3 to wear face coverings.
Enforcing this policy will be in the hands of public health officials and won’t be handled by law enforcement officials, he said.
“I am not looking for people to get in trouble by not wearing a mask but I am looking for people to please do the right thing,” Mr. Northam said.
Jurisdictions in Northern Virginia, as well as Accomack County and the city of Richmond, decided not to enter phase one of reopening with the rest of the state due to their high concentration of coronavirus cases.
Mr. Northam said those localities are ready to move into phase one on Friday and he would have more details about their transition on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the District is still set to enter phase one of reopening on Friday, even after the Department of Health (DOH) reported a spike in community transmission over the weekend.
“Most of you know, over the weekend we had a setback in the community spread metric,” Miss Bowser said Tuesday at a press conference. “This morning we reported we are now at 13 days of sustained decline, if the trend holds we will be able to report 14 days of decline tomorrow.”
DOH Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt told reporters on Sunday, which would have been the District’s 14th consecutive day of declining community transmission, that officials were resetting the count back to day 11, rather than zero, because the spike was not significant enough to warrant resetting the count completely.
The metric for community transmission is measured by the date of symptom onset, rather than the date a test was taken. That is why the District isn’t sharing this data daily with the public, because the numbers can fluctuate as more tests are confirmed, officials said.
If the decline in community transmission continues, Wednesday will be the 14th day of decline, and Miss Bowser said she then would sign a mayor’s order to initiate phase one of the reopening plan on Friday.
The Reopen D.C. Advisory Committee presented its recommendations for reopening last week, which included restaurants opening for outdoor seating, retailers opening for curbside pickup and barbershops and salons opening by appointment only.
Over the weekend, DOH also separated the data for the number of D.C. residents who have been tested for the coronavirus from the total number of persons who have tested in the District, including nonresidents.
“I can tell you we have no interest in cooking the books,” Miss Bowser said Tuesday when asked by reporters about the changes in data. “We have put out proactively a lot of information on a daily basis and we will continue to do that.”
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