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Multnomah County is instituting new indoor masking requirements in public spaces, including businesses, making the county the most populous and liberal in the state the first to reinstate restrictions amid a new increase in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations caused by the highly contagious delta variant.
The restrictions, which go into effect on Friday, apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. For the first time, they will be accompanied by an enforcement mechanism that includes fines.
County president Deborah Kafoury and health chief Dr. Jennifer Vines hold a press conference at 1:30 p.m. to announce the restrictions and underlying details. They will be joined by Guadalupe Guerrero, principal of Portland public schools, and leaders of local health systems.
State authorities and the governor have so far taken a hands-off approach to the latest wave and deferred any restrictions to local authorities. They reiterated masking recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control, which call on vaccinated and unvaccinated residents in areas where the coronavirus is spreading widely to wear masks. Thirty-five of Oregon’s 36 counties fall into this bucket based on their case positivity rates and tests. Last week, the governor also announced that all healthcare workers will need to be vaccinated or undergo regular testing.
The masking requirements, perhaps the least disruptive of many restrictions that the country’s authorities have turned to in the past year and a half, are nonetheless deeply unpopular in many parts of the state. And most of those areas have much higher COVID infection rates and more worrying trend lines on a variety of public health indicators than Multnomah County.
Multnomah County’s adult vaccination rate of 74.9% puts it just behind Washington County, and its recent case rate per 10,000 people is lower than that of all counties except a handle. Nevertheless, county leaders are apparently alarmed.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
To see more data and trends, visit https://projects.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/
–Ted Sickinger; [email protected]; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger
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