On Tuesday the Montgomery County Council voted to approve an amended Board of Health regulation to require seven consecutive days of substantial COVID-19 transmission in Montgomery County before an indoor face covering requirement is reinstated in areas open to the public.
The indoor mask requirement would have been reinstated on Tuesday, November 9, as the seventh consecutive day of substantial transmission would technically have been on November 5 (with a four-day grace period to allow numbers to be confirmed with CDC data). Today, however, on November 4th, the Montgomery County numbers dropped below 50 cases per 100,000 persons, coming in at 49.5
The County is deemed an area of substantial transmission if it reaches 50 to 99.99 total new cases per 100,000 persons in the past seven days or 8 to 9.99 percent test positivity during the past seven days. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classifies transmission values as low, moderate, substantial or high.
The amended Board of Health regulation became effective immediately upon its adoption by the Board of Health and would automatically terminate at 12:01 a.m. on the day immediately following the date that 85 percent or more of the County’s population is fully vaccinated, as reported by the CDC on its COVID Data Tracker.