Salem Mayor Pushes Coronavirus Test Mandate For Big Indoor Events

SALEM, MA — A negative coronavirus test may soon be required to attend any large indoor event in Salem.

The Salem Board of Health will hold a special meeting Friday night at 7. The agenda states the meeting is for: "Discussion, deliberation, and vote on a potential mandate that all attendees of large scale indoor, events be tested for COVID-19 prior to attending the event."

The public is invited to attend and make comments at the virtual meeting here.

On Monday, Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll and health officials held a virtual forum with city businesses on the Halloween tourist season and said she expected no further business restrictions were forthcoming beyond the city's indoor mask mandate enacted Aug. 23 and scheduled to run through Nov. 13.

"Based on what we are seeing it doesn't look like any of these additional mitigation measures may be necessary," she said on Monday.

But four days later, Driscoll posted on her Twitter account that she supports the negative-test requirement.

"Given what we have seen with the Delta variant and what we know about the number of out-of-state attendees at these events (balls, festivals, parties, etc.), I believe this is an entirely reasonable precaution to take," she said. "We have front line employees working in our hotels and larger venues who may have children under 12 or immune-compromised individuals they go home to in the evening and we want to provide another layer of protection against spread to them during the busy Haunted Happenings season.

"Having a free, negative testing protocol in place as a requirement to entry for large scale, indoor events is a reasonable and evidence-based approach to keeping Salem safe, open and strong throughout the busy Halloween season."

While the agenda item will be debated, it appears the proposal would apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated attendees of city events.

It is unclear if this test requirement would also apply to indoor events at Salem Public Schools and Salem State University, where students and staff are required to be vaccinated, or even large fall wedding receptions.

Health Agent David Greenbaum said on Monday the city was not, at that time, considering a universal vaccine passport or mandate to enter businesses or attend holiday events.

"The Board (of Health) is very cognizant of the difficulties that were in place last year," Greenbaum said on Monday. "And what it took to work through that. I think they are very, very cognizant of the impacts that had on businesses. So they are trying to do the things in a stepping-stone process to go from the least impactful to the most impactful.

"The hope is that we never get to the restrictions that were the most impactful."

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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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