Philadelphia Mask Mandate Back in Effect as Covid Cases Rise

PHILADELPHIA — Amid the jumble of warnings, rules and edicts on the counter of the H20 Laundromat — “No Cash,” “Watch Your Step,” “Not Responsible” — there was a new one on Monday morning, prominently displayed. “Masks required for everyone,” it said, “effective April 18.”

The owner, Chris Lee, had taped it there over the weekend though the new rule was not his. It was the city’s. Starting on Monday, the Philadelphia health commissioner announced last week, everyone in the city would be required to wear masks in indoor public places, except in businesses where proof of vaccination was checked upon entry.

Mr. Lee’s response was fairly representative.

“I’m for it,” he said. “I guess.”

Over the past month and a half, a number of cities, including Philadelphia, lifted mask mandates that had been in place for some of the deadliest months of the Covid-19 pandemic, signaling that a return to normalcy was perhaps, once again, near. But another oddly named subvariant soon arrived, and infections began heading upward again. With a low but quickly climbing case count, Philadelphia became the first major American city this spring to order its residents to put the masks back on.

The decision comes at an uncertain time in the pandemic, as new variants of unknown risk show up while the wide availability of home tests has complicated official tallies of new infections. The Omicron subvariant known as BA.2 reversed a nationwide decline in new cases, but it is spreading in a country that is better vaccinated than when the Delta variant arrived last year. There are good antiviral medication options now. And so far, a spike in hospitalizations has not followed the spike in infections.

At the same time, many people, even some of the most cautious, have lost their appetite for vigilance, and rules have grown harder to keep track of. Seeking to forestall a new surge, the Biden administration extended the federal mask mandate on public transportation for two more weeks, but a federal judge in Florida vacated the mandate on Monday. Theaters on Broadway recently dropped proof-of-vaccination rules but extended mask requirements to the end of May.

As cases tick up, local and state leaders across the country will have to decide if a point comes when recommendations are no longer enough and policies like mask mandates are again called for.

“From the kind of larger public health perspective, this is a constant dance that we are in, especially here in the United States, of when to put things into policy,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and academic dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

For Philadelphia’s health department, that point was reached last week, when a rising number of cases automatically triggered the mask mandate. The city of 1.6 million people has been broadly compliant with public health directives for the past two years, and masking was widespread even without a mandate. Still, the reversal presents a case study for other cities, a test of how thin patience may have worn for pandemic restrictions, even in a place where thousands of people have died from Covid-19.

“I think it’s…