A police officer likley won’t arrest you if you’re not wearing a facemask.
Health officials say the masks help to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease. This week, Gov. Ralph Northam, with his latest Executive Order, imposed even stricter requirements on wearing facemasks.
Customers of restaurants, retail stores, fitness centers, shooting ranges, pet stores, campgrounds, amusement parks, zoos, and racetracks, to name a few, must continue to wear masks and maintain adequate social distancing. Take a look around just about anywhere, and the facemask has become as common as a shirt and a pair of shoes.
According to Northam’s order, if a business can’t follow the governor’s rules, it must close. Residents, including children five and older, must wear masks while outdoors. The governor says he will allow Virginians to remove their masks while inside their own homes or to “participate in a religious ritual.”
Northam has tasked the state’s public health offices to enforce his mandates. In effect, they are the mask police, and anyone found by a public health department not wearing one is subject to 12 months in jail, a $2,500 fine, or both.
The mask requirements are in addition to a new lockdown order Virginians have not seen this year — a mandate that everyone to stay locked inside their homes between midnight and 5 a.m., December 14 to January 31, 2021. There are exceptions for those who need to travel to work, or to a store to pick up needed supplies.
In Prince William and Rappahannock Area health districts, a total of two new part-time employees have been hired to help respond to mask complaints. The health districts encourage residents to use an online form to report violations of the governor’s mask mandate, and it receives more than 60 complaints a day.
It takes about two days for health inspectors to follow up with those complaints, and inspectors spend most of their time dealing with repeat offending businesses, said Virginia Department of Health spokeswoman Alison Balmes-John.
So far, they’ve not asked the police for help.
“This is not something that I think law enforcement should be doing, as it will only lead to a confrontation,” said Manassas City Police Chief Douglas Keen.
Keen’s officers often remind business owners and their customers to wear their masks, though they’re “not walking up to poeple on the street and demanding they put on a mask,” Keen adds.
For health department officials, it’s much of the same.
“Our staff typically begin with an educational approach, ensuring that the business has an understanding of the executive order. Often, especially in a single complaint about mask-wearing or a capacity issue, our staff follow up with a phone conversation with the establishment owner. In many cases, this resolves the issue,” said Balmes-John.
Health inspectors have encountered businesses that have demanded customers remove their masks, says Balmes-John, which constitutes a “severe violation.” She did not provide specific numbers on how many severe violations have been reported in the two regional health districts but added, “the issue was resolved after meeting with the business owner, so further action was not required.”
The number of reported coronavirus cases continues to climb despite the prevalence of face masks. Virginia hit an all-time high number of reported cases on December 9, with 4,398 new cases.
The number of hospitalizations, however, is and continues to be low. Just 0.02% of the state’s eight-million residents, for a total of 1,749 people, are today in a hospital with a confirmed case of coronavirus disease.
