WASHINGTON — D.C.'s mayor announced several critical COVID policy changes at a press conference Monday.
Starting Tuesday, indoor venues in the District will no longer be required to verify if patrons are vaccinated. However, businesses can still choose to have a vaccination requirement.
"We do believe that we've gotten the push out of the vaccine requirement for indoor venues that we're going to get," Mayor Muriel Bowser said.
Vaccination is still required for D.C. government employees and healthcare workers.
The mayor also announced that she would not be extending the indoor mask mandate set to expire on Feb. 28. Instead, starting March 1, masks will not be required at several indoor venues, including restaurants, bars, gyms, grocery stores, retail businesses and more.
Masks will still be required in some D.C. buildings, including schools and health care facilities. Any private business that wishes to require masks for workers or customers will be allowed to do so, Bowser said.
See the District's list below of where masks will and won't be required.
The mayor said the vaccination and mask changes come as COVID data shows significant signs of improvement over the last few weeks.
"Since the height of the omicron wave in D.C., COVID-19 cases have dropped by more than 90% and there's been a 95% reduction in hospitalizations," Bowser said in a tweet.
However, Bowser was quick to add that should cases rise again, D.C. would not hesitate to reinstate needed policies applying to masks or vaccines.
"I don't think any of us can say here that there won't be other variants that would require us to do something different," she said.
After Feb. 26, D.C. will also close its firehouse testing sites. They will be replaced instead by COVID-19 testing centers across the city, with one in each ward. Libraries providing rapid antigen tests and PCR tests are still in place in D.C. but Bowser states that the demand will be monitored.