The vote was five to five. The motion on the table was to not consider reinstating a county-wide mask mandate. No one asked to vote on whether or not to require masks, so the meeting ended, leaving masks optional.
Debates over mask rules have been political in North Carolina and around the country. New Hanover County is no different. The county’s Health and Human Services board was set up to oversee public health and human services. Board members never expected to be in the center of protest and debate over mask rules.
The New Hanover County Health and Human Services board met in Wilmington Tuesday. New Hanover is seeing the same spike in case numbers that the rest of the state is, fueled by the fast-spreading omicron variant.
Less than a week earlier, Guilford County Commission members voted to reinstate a mask mandate for indoor public areas like grocery stores and restaurants.
North Carolina has been reporting tens of thousands of new cases each day, with a percent-positive of tests hovering around 30%. On Tuesday, the state reported 20,000 people have now died in North Carolina from COVID-19 since the pandemic arrived in the state in March 2020.
New Hanover County reported 5,208 new cases over the last two weeks with an average of 372 new cases each day. There are 93 people hospitalized in New Hanover County and 10 people are in intensive care units, County Public Health Director David Howard said.
The governor dropped the statewide mask mandate over the summer, leaving it to local governments and school boards to make their own decisions on face masks.
“Most people here have made sacrifices before in order to help their community. I think that wearing masks for most people is a relatively small sacrifice,” said board member Kara Duffy at Tuesday’s meeting.
New Hanover County imposed an indoor mask rule as the delta variant drove up cases in the summer. But the county dropped the mandate in the fall as cases went down again.
Public schools in the county have a separate rule requiring masks inside school buildings.
“Our COVID metrics in New Hanover County remain high and the omicron variant is highly transmissible, so we strongly encourage people to wear a mask, and use the other tools we have available to us that are proven to help, and that includes vaccinations with boosters and getting tested,” said board chair Dr. LeShonda Wallace. Her vote indicated that she supported a new mask mandate.
“While there may not be a rule in place, we hope the community will do all they can to be proactive and help prevent the spread and impacts of COVID-19,” Wallace said.
“I want everybody to have their individual rights and freedoms as long as they don’t infringe on others’ rights,” said County Commissioner Jonathan Barfield, who sits on the board.
“In my house we wear masks,” he said. “We’ve been vaccinated and boosted.”
“From the public comments we received prior to the meeting, those we heard today and even based on our vote as the Health and Human Services Board, it is clear that people have a wide array of opinions and thoughts on how to best combat COVID-19,” he said.
But for him, it came down to letting people decide for themselves.
He said he was also concerned about businesses being back in a position of having to enforce a mask mandate. He related a story about how a customer became hostile and frightened his daughter while she was working at a Walgreen's.
“The one thing we should all agree on is being kind and respectful to our neighbors and others we come into contact with, no matter their stance on masking, vaccinations or other topics around this pandemic. Common courtesy and civility can go a long way to easing the tensions we are all feeling as we continue to navigate this together,” he said.