Savannah has reinstated its mask mandate, owing to the “steep” increases in daily Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations across the city and the state of Georgia.
The order is effective immediately and requires individuals in the city of about 145,000 people to wear masks in indoor public settings, regardless of vaccination status, Mayor Van Johnson announced at a press conference on Monday. The mandate applies to places like city government buildings and school facilities.
The decision places the Atlantic coastal city alongside St Louis in Missouri, one of the US hotspots for the Delta variant of Covid-19, where a reinstated mask mandate went into effect on Monday, and the county of Los Angeles, which brought back its mask order earlier this month.
Johnson said the decision to bring back masks was in response to a “steep and alarming rise” in the level of new coronavirus cases and hospitalisations in Savannah and its surrounding counties in Georgia. This was due, he said, to factors including the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant, gatherings and events like the…
