Columbia City Council extends its citywide, school mask rules
The Columbia City Council has extended its citywide face mask policy amid the still-swirling COVID-19 pandemic.
The move to extend the measure for 60 days came during a Tuesday afternoon council meeting. The vote was unanimous.
While the seven-day rolling average of new COVID cases has been falling in South Carolina, numbers have remained high. The state Department of Health and Environmental Control reported nearly 1,300 new cases in South Carolina on Tuesday, and 27 new deaths. Nearly 53% of eligible South Carolina citizens have completed COVID-19 vaccinations.
“We continue to see a decline in the number of cases, but certainly we are still holding the line on a fairly high number of deaths with COVID,” Mayor Steve Benjamin said Tuesday. “There is some anticipation, based on some of the data we are seeing, that there may be another spike after Thanksgiving.
“I think the most important message we can continue to push to everyone is to get vaccinated. We are in a pandemic of the unvaccinated right now.”
Statistics shared by Lexington Medical Center seem to underline the effectiveness of vaccinations against hospitalization. As of Tuesday, the hospital had 49 COVID patients hospitalized. Of those, 46 were unvaccinated. The hospital had 21 COVID patients in intensive care. Of those, 20 were unvaccinated.
The ordinance requires residents to wear face masks inside of commercial businesses or other indoor venues open to the public in the city. It also says residents are required to wear masks “in situations where distances between people change frequently, such as a busy sidewalk, waiting area or popular outdoor area where it is impractical or impossible” to maintain social distancing.
Fines for violating the ordinance are $100, and the measure is enforced by marshals with the city’s fire department.
The ordinance also requires masks for students and faculty in schools or day cares citywide.
The practice of masks in schools amid the coronavirus has been a point of contention throughout the fall. In early August, the city passed a measure requiring students and faculty to wear masks in some city schools. This came despite a one-year law, called a proviso, that the state Legislature included in the 2021-22 state budget that said money from that budget could not be used to enforce mask mandates in schools. Republican state Attorney General Alan Wilson subsequently sued the city over its school mask mandate in the state Supreme Court, which sided with the attorney general.
So, in early September, the city came back with a new ordinance in which it directly stated that the measure would be enforced by officials from the city fire department, and that no school officials or personnel are required to help with enforcement. The city also noted that no school official shall expend any funds from the 2021-22 state appropriations bill toward the enforcement or promotion of the city’s measure. Tuesday’s extension maintains that language.
Meanwhile, a federal court has issued an injunction temporarily blocking the one-year state law that bans school districts from using state funds to require masks in classrooms. The federal court ruled that banning mask mandates discriminates against students with disabilities because banning mask mandates makes it unsafe for some children to attend school.
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 2:48 PM.
