Kansas City mayor extends mask order ‘indefinitely.’ Here’s what you need to know
Friday morning, Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas announced the city’s mask order would be extended “indefinitely” and will run alongside the current emergency order that expires in August.
The state of emergency is set to expire on Aug. 15, but if it is extended, the city’s mask mandate will be extended alongside it, said Morgan Said, a spokeswoman for Lucas.
“It’s important for you to make sure people are wearing masks,” Lucas said at a Friday morning news conference outside City Hall.
As coronavirus case numbers continue rise in the metropolitan area, the mayor said bars and taverns will remain at 50% capacity.
Lucas said $500,000 from a small business relief fund has been distributed to Kansas City businesses. There were 128 applications and 28 loans were awarded. Lucas said details on who received the loans will be shared later.
With funds from the CARES Act Clay County Grant, Lucas said a $1.5 million business relief fund has been established for businesses in the Clay County part of Kansas City.
Another $1 million fund in the Clay County portion of Kansas City will help support “emergency rental utility and nutrition services,” Lucas said.
He said the city will also offer a large COVID-19 testing event — first for restaurant industry employees and then appointments will open for others — at the Homefield Sports Facility at 5000 Bannister Road from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
“We will learn to co-exist with COVID for the time being,” Lucas said. “It will be important for us to continue to wear masks. It will be important for us to maintain social distancing.”
Lucas said people holding family events should remember that several of the outbreaks of COVID-19, including deadly ones, began at such events.
Kansas City Health Department Director Rex Archer said Friday that the best thing for people to do in order for schools to be able to reopen and for people to go to sporting events again is to wear masks.
But Archer urged people to be “polite and civil” when asking others to wear masks.
“You don’t know for sure whether somebody else has some type of a medical condition that prohibits them from wearing a mask or a communication issue,” he said. “Don’t get into arguments with folks.”
Lucas said there is large-scale compliance with the mask order in the city, though it’s not perfect.
“We’ve seen outstanding progress,” Lucas said. “I think, frankly, it will only get stronger as time goes on.”
Dr. Erica Carney, director of Emergency Medical Services, said a few hospital employees have tested positive. When tracing those, they usually found the positive cases came from community outbreaks and were not job-related.
“So what that tells me is that the masks do work,” she said.
The original mask order, which went into effect on June 29, was set to expire on Sunday after two weeks.
Under the order, all employees or visitors to indoor public spaces in Kansas City must wear masks when they are “in an area or while performing an activity which will necessarily involve close contact or proximity to co-workers or the public where six feet of separation is not feasible.”
Businesses are asked to deny entry to people who do not wear masks, and the city health department enforced the order through complaints.
Some are exempt from the order, including:
- Minors, with strong guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Kansas City Health Department that children over age 2 wear face coverings.
- People with disabilities that prevent them from comfortably wearing or taking off face coverings or communicating while wearing face coverings.
- People with respiratory conditions or breathing trouble.
- People who have been told by a medical, legal, or behavioral health professional not to wear face coverings.
- People seated in a restaurant or tavern who are consuming food or drink while adequately distanced from other patrons.
Wyandotte County, Jackson County and the state of Kansas have issued their own mask orders in the last two weeks. Although Kansas’s order could be overturned by county governments, the Johnson County Commission voted to leave it in place.
Platte and Clay counties in Missouri did not issue mask mandates.
North Kansas City plans to extend its mask mandate to Aug. 1, according to a Friday afternoon news release.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 10:09 AM.
