No plans yet to reinstate Palm Beach County indoor mask rules despite high-risk COVID level
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Days after it was reported that the federal government should have recommended indoor masking in South Florida amid another COVID-19 wave, some Palm Beach County cities aren’t planning to reinstate mask requirements yet.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged Thursday in semi-hidden footnotes on its website that it should have classified Florida’s three biggest counties as places where COVID-19 poses a “high” risk to their health-care systems.
If the CDC had correctly classified Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, the 6.2 million Floridians living in those places would have known that the spread of COVID had gotten so bad that the agency recommends they once again wear masks indoors. The coronavirus that causes the deadly respiratory disease is airborne and thrives in poorly ventilated places.
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When informed for the first time about the CDC’s error, officials in Palm Beach County and some cities said they had no plans to bring back mask rules in buildings they own or operate.
Cities, Palm Beach County aren't ready to require masking
The county government “continues to strongly recommend masks in” buildings it owns or leases, spokeswoman Lisa De La Rionda said Monday afternoon, but officials aren’t looking at bringing back the indoor masking requirement it dropped Feb. 14.
In West Palm Beach, the county’s most populous city, where Mayor Keith James dropped a similar mandate on May 3, city spokeswoman Kathleen Walker said in an email that reinstating the rule “is an option that remains on the table and may be exercised by the Mayor, should he deem appropriate.”
“The City of Boynton Beach will continue to monitor the situation with our community partners (PB County Health Department) and make appropriate adjustments as needed, or required,” that city’s spokeswoman, Eleanor Krusell said in an email.
“The Town of Jupiter has no plans to re-examine its indoor masking policy,” spokesman Shawn Reed said.
Those cities, along with other sizable municipalities in the county such Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Wellington, do not require mask-wearing for employees and visitors in the buildings they own or lease. Nor does the Palm Beach County courthouse or Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
Schools are banned from requiring students to mask up because of legislation Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in November.
The Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, which seats about 2,200 in its Dreyfoos Hall “continues to encourage” visitors to wear masks and offers them for anyone who wants them, spokeswoman Heather Vidulich said.
The CDC assigns a rating of “low,” “medium,” or “high” for each U.S. county to rate how much COVID impacts those communities and their hospitals.
The federal agency uses recent infection and hospitalizations data from each state to assess each county. It maps the data, coloring “low-risk” counties as green, “medium” as yellow, and “high” as orange.
The CDC recommends that people in “high” risk counties wear masks indoors to stop the spread of COVID and to keep hospitals from becoming crowded with people who contract the respiratory illness.
How the CDC decides whether counties are high risk
Counties are classified as “high” risk if, in the past week, they log at least 200 new COVID cases and 10 COVID-positive hospital patients for every 100,000 residents; and at least 10% of patients test positive for the disease.
The CDC launched this “COVID-19 Community Levels” system in February, aiming to emphasize hospitalizations. The omicron variant, which had engulfed the nation at the time, but hospitalized a smaller share of people infected compared with the virus’ previous versions.
A “data processing error” caused the CDC to mistakenly count zero new coronavirus cases for all of Florida’s 67 counties last week, erroneously placing Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties in the “medium” risk category, the federal agency said in a footnote on its Community Levels web page. Osceola County was wrongly classified as “low” risk, when it should have been “medium.”
Those footnotes are hidden when the web page loads. Viewers must click “footnotes” to reveal them.
Twitter user @midnucas first pointed out the error Thursday. University of South Florida epidemiologist Dr. Jason Salemi noticed it, too, and shared the information that night to his 6,000 followers.
“This footnote is hidden from users and something that would be incredibly hard to find,” Salemi said in an email. “Why, if the data show that these counties are in a ‘high’ community level, would the … map not reflect this reality? Such a level shift would have considerable implications for individuals, businesses, and communities that are heeding the CDC’s recommendations.”
As of Monday afternoon, the CDC still lists Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties as “medium” risk counties, which Salemi described Friday night on Twitter as “infuriating.”
The Florida Department of Health regularly sends COVID data to the CDC. Representatives for the state and federal agencies did not respond Monday to questions asking about the data discrepancy.
Chris Persaud is The Palm Beach Post's data reporter. Email him at cpersaud@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: COVID risk level high in South Florida; no plans for mask requirements
