Coronavirus in RI: Fabric Masks Required In Businesses

PROVIDENCE, RI — Starting Saturday, all employees at customer-facing, office-based and manufacturing businesses, as well as non-profits that have not been shut down by the coronavirus will be required to wear fabric face coverings, Gov. Gina Raimondo announced Tuesday. There are 275 new cases of the virus, as well as seven additional deaths.

To date, there have been 3,251 total cases and 80 total deaths. At this time, 213 people are currently in the hospital.

Raimondo's new executive order goes into effect Saturday to give businesses time to get ready. Businesses will be required to provide their employees some form of face covering. Employees can bring their own homemade mask, scarf or bandanna if they prefer. All businesses must also remind customers to wear face coverings as well, such as posting signs.

"You have to do it because it's going to help everyone in Rhode Island," she said. "It's the right thing to do. I have said so many times that I want to reopen the economy. And I do want to reopen the economy. The new normal of life to come at work until we have a vaccine and treatment is going to be a new normal of wearing masks. I need this to be something you get used to."

The order applies to "pretty much all businesses," Raimondo said, though the state will work with those that may need exceptions, such as call centers. The order also does not apply to children under 2 years old and people who cannot wear a face covering for health reasons. Those who cannot safely wear a mask should not be leaving their homes, the governor added, saying it is not safe for them to be around others who could give them the virus.

At this time, specific penalties are not in place for violators, Raimondo said. The Department of Business Regulation has the authority to levy fines or other penalties in the future if spot-checking shows that businesses are not following the order.

"I will tighten the regulation, and add a penalty, if we don't have compliance," Raimondo said.

While fabric face coverings do not prevent the wearer from contracting the disease, they help contain the respiratory droplets that can spread the disease, since people can carry and spread the disease without showing symptoms, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, the director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, said. These face coverings should not be a replacement for practicing safe social distancing, staying home as much as possible and especially staying home when sick, she added.

Reopening the state's economy remains the top priority, Raimondo said, adding that she will begin to do so as soon as it can safely be done. However, she cautioned, the change will not be overnight.

"There is not going be a magic reopening, flip-of-the-switch reopening," Raimondo said. "Obviously, the industries that can come back online sooner are ones where they don't rely on people as a business model. We all need to start to realize for the next year, or so, we are going to be living under a new set of regulations."

The last businesses to reopen, she continued, will be those that require large groups of people crowded into a small areas, such as the hospitality and entertainment industries.

Addressing President Donald Trump's comments that he had the total executive authority to reopen the nation's economy, Raimondo said she expects to work with fellow leaders and the White House, but ultimately the decisions will lie with individual governors.

"The governors were the ones who had to make the tough decisions to close the states, and we're the ones who will have to make the tough decisions to reopen," she said. "My guiding principal is how I can get the most amount of people back to work as quickly as possible, as safely as possible. I am going to do what's best for Rhode Island."

On Tuesday, the governor announced a $10 million loan program for small businesses in the state from Goldman Sachs. Within the day, all of the funds had been spoken for, so she is working to get additional money for businesses in need, Raimondo said.

Three of Tuesday's seven deaths were nursing home residents, Alexander-Scott said. One was a resident at Orchard View in Riverside who was in their 80s and two, one in their 60s and one in their 80s, were at Oakland Grove in Woonsocket. In addition, another person in their 70s was a resident at AccessPoint RI, a home for adults with differing abilities in Cranston. This was the second death at that facility, Alexander-Scott said.

Because they house some of the state's most "physically and medically fragile" populations, nursing homes remain a top cause for concern, Alexander-Scott said. Most of the state's coronavirus-related deaths have been in nursing homes so far, though the clusters of infection and fatalities at several specific homes have not been to such an extent as to be worthy of an independent investigation into how the outbreak is being handled, Raimondo said.

Patch Editor Scott Souza contributed to this report.

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