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Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said he plans to file a lawsuit against St. Louis and St. Louis County to reinstate a mask warrant for vaccinated and unvaccinated people over 5 years of age.
Local leaders announced the new requirements on Friday, citing the growing number of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. The requirements were due to go into effect Monday in indoor public places and on public transport.
Masks are also “strongly encouraged” for outdoor groups.
Schmitt, a GOP candidate for the US Senate, said he was heading to court to stop the new mask requirements.
ST. LOUIS MANDATES INSIDE MASKS Whatever the immunization status, recommends exterior masks
“The citizens of St. Louis and St. Louis County are not subjects – they are free people,” Schmitt tweeted. “As attorney general, I will file a complaint on Monday to stop this madness.”
The mask requirement comes as local health officials raised new alarms over the rapidly spreading Delta variant of COVID-19 and low vaccination rates, saying extra precautions were needed to save lives.
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“We have lost over 500 residents of Saint-Louis to COVID-19, and if our region does not work together to protect each other, we could see peaks overwhelm our hospitals and public health systems.” , Dr Fredrick Echols, acting director of health for the city of St. Louis, said in a statement Friday.
St. Louis County reported 241 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, raising the 7-day average to 212, which is slightly above the level it was at in mid-April. The county’s average test positivity rate rose to 9.4% over the past week, the highest since late January.
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The CDC announced on May 13 that vaccinated Americans no longer had to wear masks, but the push for the Delta variant has caused some local officials to rethink those guidelines.
Dr Rachel Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said this week that her agency’s mask guidelines had not changed, but that “communities and individuals must make the decisions that are best for them. are appropriate depending on what is happening in their region. “
Schmitt is running to succeed Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., In the Senate from an overcrowded pool of candidates. He told Fox News earlier this month that what stands out from the crowd in the GOP arena is its ability to bring lawsuits to push back against the Biden administration’s “truly radical” agenda.
Schmitt said the legal effort is to fight authoritarian executive actions and protect personal freedoms. He also dealt a few blows to the Democratic mayor of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones, for the “violent crime raging” in his city.
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Fox News’ Paul Best and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
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