Maine physicians call on businesses to reinstate mask mandates
File photo / Ezra Schreiber-MacQuaid
Maine’s largest physician organization is asking businesses statewide to require masking of all employees and the public. In 2020, the town of Bar Harbor rolled out signage like this, asking visitors to mask up.
Maine’s largest physician organization is calling on businesses statewide to require face masking inside their doors.
The Maine Medical Association, headquartered in Manchester and comprising over 4,000 members, said in a news release last week that businesses should require all employees and customers to wear the protective coverings in an effort to reduce COVID-19 infection.
The group also is asking businesses to post signs about the requirement for customers and visitors, and to provide masks for those without them.
The steps, similar to state-mandated measures that were in place last year, came in response to alarming growth in Maine's COVID cases and hospitalization rates, the release said.
The association strongly urged Mainers to receive vaccinations and boosters against the disease, and to mask while indoors or in crowded outdoor settings with people outside of their household, regardless of vaccination status.
"We can all do something important to fight COVID-19,” the association’s president, Dr. Jeff Barkin, said in the release. “As a psychiatrist, I know how seriously your lives have changed and how much you miss your loved ones, but there’s a real and dangerous risk we could lose all progress. Please, do the right thing. Get vaccinated. Get your booster. And wear a mask.”
Masks and vaccines, combined with hand-washing and physical distancing, are critical tools in the fight against COVID-19 and its variants, particularly in a community setting, the MMA said.
The association said that current case surges and the yet unknown severity of the extremely contagious omicron variant have raised fears of a dangerous post-holiday spike in the pandemic.
“Masking and vaccines are proven public health measures to reducing COVID-19 transmission,” said Dr. Lani Graham, a longtime association member and former director of the Maine Bureau of Health, now the Maine Center for Disease Control. “States and communities requiring masks not only had lower cases but more importantly, fewer people in the hospital and lower death rates.”
Graham cited a new study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University on the impact of mask mandates at the state level since the beginning of the pandemic.
New universal indoor mask mandates in five states — regardless of vaccination status — reduced COVID-19 case counts in the weeks after their implementation compared to states without mask mandates, the study showed. That was true even when comparing states with higher rates of fully vaccinated residents, Graham said.
The study focused on COVID-19 spread due to the delta variant of the disease.
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