MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — Montgomery County’s mask mandate expires Monday night at 11:59 p.m.
Bethesda resident Stephen Cohen couldn’t be more ready to take his mask off.
"Thank goodness, I mean that’s long overdue," said Cohen. "In spite of everyone's best efforts to get this under control, it's never been under control. I don’t see it becoming under control so let's just let people do what they want to do."
Before you take the mask off, get boosted. That’s the message in Montgomery County.
The mandate has been in place since mid-November. It was set to expire multiple times since, but the County Council held off due to the omicron surge.
County Executive Marc Elrich says he’s still concerned about the mandate ending while transmission is still at a “substantial” level.
"We’re still in the what's called substantial transmission, we’re not even in moderate transmission," said Elrich. "I think people are too anxious to get the masks off and they need some patience. We’ve been through this 23 months, if anything we’ve learned that minimizing transmission comes with a mask and that’s worked well for us, and waiting until we were in moderate would’ve been more prudent than to go ahead."
While the County Executive says there are plenty of reasons to leave the mask on, many businesses are eager to give customers the option.
“I think it’s a good idea. I have a feeling that the usefulness of a mask mandate has gone past us, that we need to instill a little more faith in our fellow citizens and in the establishments that we have to help bring business to where we’d like to see it,” Matthew Sheehan, a manager at Tommy Joe’s said.
After two years of masks on and masks off, businesses will be able to set their own mask rules for entry. At M Studio hair salon in Bethesda, they will have certain mask-on days for wary customers.
“We definitely are considering keeping some masks on at times," Puni Pegnato, a stylist M Studio said. We have some clients that have health issues or family that have health issues so we have designated days where we can keep up with the mask mandate for them. As well as other clients that are pretty much finished with it. We’re trying to make everybody happy as best as we can.”
Despite the mandate ending, masks are still required in Montgomery County Public Schools. MCPS Board of Education has not indicated plans to lift the mandate, but Maryland State Board of Education will meet this week to discuss masks.
Elrich said he sympathizes with parents' concerns about the emotional and learning effects of masking in schools, but he believes the health effects of COVID-19 warrant caution.
"They do get sick, and everybody forgets about long COVID, and it's easy to forget about because we don’t know a whole bunch about it," he said. "There's a lot of speculation, most of the speculation is not good. The stuff on long-term heart effects is not good news. So I think there are reasons to stay masked."
Even if the state decides to drop its school mask mandate, MCPS can still keep a local mandate in place.