Salem Indoor Mask Mandate For All Businesses Begins Monday

SALEM, MA — Anyone working in or visiting a Salem business will need to wear a face-covering indoors regardless of coronavirus vaccination status starting Monday through the end of the Halloween season.

The Board of Health approved the city's proposal at a special meeting last week that it said is in an effort to help curb the spread of the delta variant with the anticipation of a massive influx of tourists over the next three months.

The mandate will begin on Monday and is set to end on Nov. 13 — designed to be two weeks after Halloween weekend — unless the Board acts to extend it.

"We're here tonight to talk about what we can do to potentially limit spread in Salem specifically in anticipation of well over 100,000 people coming to the city over the next few months," Board member Dr. Jeremy Schiller said. "We are unique in that way."

The new mandate did not include any provisions regarding social distancing for patrons or capacity limits but does state that those at bars and restaurants must wear a mask unless seated. It will also affect all visitors to stores, indoor performance venues, personal care businesses and gyms.

The mask mandate will also not apply to busy outdoor spaces that were seen as potential places of congregating and potential virus spread during last year's Halloween season.

"This is not shutting down any businesses or limiting businesses," Schiller said. "This is, in fact, hopefully preventing any of that from having to occur."

Schiller said he thought it was important that the new mask mandate "not be open-ended" and that it should have a conclusion date. The start day is set to coincide with the city's indoor mask mandate for municipal buildings and schools.

Health Agent David Greenbaum compared Salem's tourist crowd to the potential for a spike in cases like the one that happened in Provincetown around the Fourth of July where transmission was detected between both unvaccinated and vaccinated people.

"It's not just the density of people (from Salem) but the density of people coming from all around the country and all around the world — where know vaccination rates vary widely in the country," Schiller said.

Greenbaum noted that in Provincetown there were 100 people who were found to be positive for the coronavirus, but that there were only seven hospitalizations tied to those cases because of high vaccination rates in that town.

Greenbaum added that he believes other North Shore communities will "institute similar measures" with indoor mask mandates in the upcoming weeks. Currently, Swampscott has an indoor mask mandate for municipal buildings only, while other surrounding communities have yet to bring back any mask mandates.

Greenbaum said the delta variant now represents 81 percent of Salem cases in the most recent report and that the city is averaging about two new cases per day.

"We're in a position now where we might be able to prevent this from spreading any further and put this behind as we've done in the past," he said.

The majority of the public comments were against reinstituting the mask mandate — with those commenting saying at this point it is an individual responsibility to get vaccinated.

The Board did not take up the city proposal that all city and school employees must either be vaccinated or be tested twice per week — and that private businesses that deal with the public be encouraged to institute a similar policy — with members indicating that is a city mandate and not under the Board's authority.

"Masking is not a big ask," Board member Sara Moore said. "Nobody likes it. But it's not a big ask."

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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