Town of Palm Beach will move to mask requirement for public meetings at Town Hall
The spike in Palm Beach County's COVID-19 positivity rates has Palm Beach officials concerned, and going forward, masks will be required for public meetings at Town Hall.
Town Council President Margaret Zeidman told the Daily News Friday that the move is in keeping with the recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to wear masks indoors because of the county's high positivity rate. Zeidman, Mayor Danielle Moore and Town Manager Kirk Blouin agreed to implement the mask mandate at meetings, Zeidman said.
In a news release issued Wednesday, the town said the county's positivity rate had increased from 2.4 percent for the week ending March 12, to 19.23 percent for the week ending May 28. This data, according to the CDC, puts the county and South Florida as a whole at a high risk for community transmission.
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Infections have once again become so widespread, and hospitalizations so high, that the CDC recommends people mask up indoors and on public transportation in South Florida — Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties — as well as in the Tampa Bay area, and Sarasota, Polk and Alachua counties.
"We will continue to monitor the county positivity rate, which is clearly higher than 19% since many COVID infections are not reported to the Department of Health or the CDC," Zeidman said.
She added: "We should all keep in mind that this is not 2020. We have vaccines and effective treatments and we know much more than we did about how this virus is transmitted."
Blouin told the Daily News on Thursday that the focus is on encouraging residents to follow the CDC guidelines.
"The Town of Palm Beach reinforces and supports the prevention strategies based on guidance from the experts at the CDC with the goal of protecting the island’s vulnerable population," the release said.
Officials are encouraging residents to wear a mask while indoors in public, stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines, get tested if they have symptoms and consider additional precautions for people at higher risk for severe illness.
People with symptoms, a positive test or exposure to someone with COVID-19 should wear a mask, the town said.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the town reacted swiftly with measures that included closing the beaches and declaring a state of emergency.
The town instituted a mask mandate for town-owned properties last summer in response to a surge of cases fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant, and it had remained in place through a second spike in cases earlier this year caused by the omicron variant.
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The mandate ended in March after a steady decline in cases.
"We are all tired of this virus but we will do what we can to keep the transmission in check," Zeidman said, noting that there will be periods of high transmission.
COVID, when compared to the flu, seems to cause some longer-term health issues in some people, she said, and because the data is incomplete it's "difficult to ascertain just how concerned we should be. Until that becomes more clear we should do what we can to limit transmission."
Underscoring Zeidman's sentiments, Blouin said: "We all have COVID fatigue ... but I'll probably start avoiding restaurants and wearing my mask in the grocery store again."
Carol Rose is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at crose@pbdailynews.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Masks are back at Town of Palm Beach public meetings as cases rise
