D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has extended the city’s indoor mask mandate to the end of February.
The mayor’s executive order on Wednesday also extended the limited public health emergency until Feb. 15.
The public health emergency had been set to end Wednesday, while the mask mandate would have expired next Monday.
“Although the surge of infections relating to the omicron variant appears to be abating, the stress on hospitals and medical providers and facilities continues,” the mayor wrote in the order. “Hospitalization and deaths lag infections, so the District is facing increases in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, increased ventilator use by persons with COVID-19, and more deaths than the District experienced at the beginning of January. Even infections that do not result in hospitalization result in sickness, medical personnel in isolation or quarantine, and labor shortages.”
As of Thursday, D.C. has recorded roughly 129,000 coronavirus cases and 1,280 related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, according to city data.