�������ýҕ�l

Philadelphia is ending its indoor mask mandate, city health officials said Thursday night, abruptly reversing course just days after people in the city had to start wearing masks again amid a sharp increase in infections. The Board of Health voted Thursday to rescind the mandate, according to the Philadelphia health department, which released a statement that cited “decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts.” The mandate went into effect Monday. Philadelphia had ended its earlier indoor mask mandate March 2. (Rubinkam, 4/22)

Boston health officials are recommending that people wear masks indoors again because of a steep increase in COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks. The Boston Public Health Commission said Thursday that people should take precautions, citing a 65% increase in cases and a slow rise in hospitalizations. The number of COVID-19 deaths statewide has been on the decline since January and is far from the peaks earlier in the pandemic. (4/21)

Despite recent changes at the federal level, Los Angeles County is continuing to require travelers to mask up when aboard public transit or in indoor transportation hubs such as airports. The new health officer order, which went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday, means the nation’s most populous county again has face-covering rules that go beyond those set by the state. On Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health unveiled its own updated guidance that strongly recommends residents mask up when using public transit, though it’s no longer required. (Money and Lin II, 4/21)

Top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said a judge’s decision this week to strike down a federal mask mandate on public transportation systems could set a “disturbing” precedent for the next public health crisis. The White House’s chief medical adviser told CBS’s Robert Costa that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should be the arbiter of public health decisions, not the courts. Fauci said the mask mandate was “not a judicial matter.” (Dress, 4/21)

For more than a year, a little-known group called the Health Freedom Defense Fund has been working to roll back vaccine and mask mandates all over the country, often filing lawsuits one community at a time — from a tiny town in Idaho to the Los Angeles Unified School District and beyond. The group, created last year by a former Wall Street executive turned anti-vaccine activist to advocate for “bodily autonomy,” saw mixed results, with some local officials bending under the pressure and others winning efforts to dismiss lawsuits they viewed as coming from a fringe organization. Until this week. (Abutaleb, Sampson and Marimow, 4/21)

California workplace regulators on Thursday extended mandatory pay for workers affected by the coronavirus through the end of 2022, acting more than two months after state lawmakers restored similar benefits through September. The decision again pitted management against labor as the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board renewed revised workplace safety rules that would otherwise have expired in early May. (Thompson, 4/21)