State of New York abolishes the obligation to wear masks indoors

This eliminates the obligation in the state to wear protective masks in shops, restaurants and companies.

At schools, however, the mask requirement will continue for the time being, as the governor of the Democratic Party of President Joe Biden said. In addition, cities and companies can decide for themselves whether they require the wearing of protective masks or not.

This week, several states ruled by the Democrats had already announced a departure from the mask requirement indoors. For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Monday an end to the mask requirement for vaccinated people from February 15. He justified this with a sharp decline in corona infections in recent weeks and a “stabilization” of the number of corona patients in hospitals.

Earlier, the governor of the state of New Jersey, which borders New York, Phil Murphy, announced an end to the mandatory use of masks in schools from March 7. “This is not a declaration of victory, but a confirmation that we can live with it (the coronavirus).” There were similar announcements from the states of Connecticut, Delaware and Oregon.

The question of a mask requirement is politically highly controversial in the USA. While states governed by the Democrats had imposed extensive requirements for wearing a protective mask, Republican politicians reject a mask requirement as an attack on individual freedoms. Conservative-governed states such as Florida and Texas have even banned the requirement to wear a protective mask.

The USA had experienced a massive increase in corona cases since December due to the spread of the Omikron variant. Recently, the number of infections has fallen sharply again. However, the number of corona deaths remains very high: an average of more than 2400 people die every day nationwide as a result of a corona infection. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 900,000 people have already died as a result of corona in the USA.

Despite the still devastating effects of the pandemic, many US citizens are longing for a return to normality – and are increasingly willing to accept the coronavirus as part of everyday life. Democratic politicians are therefore afraid of scaring voters away by sticking to tough anti-corona measures. The focus is on the midterm Congressional elections in November, known as midterms, in which the Democrats could lose their majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives to the Republicans.

However, the corona easing is in contradiction to the recommendations of the US health authority CDC. This generally recommends wearing masks indoors in regions with “significant and high transmission rates”. This applies to both unvaccinated and vaccinated.

The CDC had relaxed its recommendations for wearing protective masks in May 2021 amid sharply falling infection numbers and rapid progress in the vaccination campaign. Then the country was overrun by the highly contagious Delta variant in the summer and the CDC made a U-turn.