Hirji leaves mask order to municipal councils
Medical officer of health remains reluctant to make masks mandatory
While evidence continues to mount in favour in the efficacy masks play in reducing the spread of COVID-19, Niagara’s top health care official remains cool to the notion of issuing an order to make wearing face coverings mandatory in the region.
In a Monday interview, Dr. Mustafa Hirji said he remains concerned too many Niagara residents are not practising effective infection control, including wearing masks. He said an order to require masks to be worn in businesses is better left to municipal governments.
“I don’t think the medical officer of health or the public health department should be issuing orders that determine how the economy operates,” said Hirji. “I think that is something that can be done with a bylaw passed by elected officials.”
A recent study by Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, University of California and California Institute of Technology compared transmission of the virus and preventative measures in New York City and Italy, where mask-wearing became mandatory part way through the pandemic.
They found that after masks were required, New York reduced infections by 66,000 from April 17 to May 9. In Italy, they were reduced by 78,000 from April 6 to May 9.
“What we believe is that if you impose the use of face masks and you do it properly, it is potentially a way to control the pandemic,” said Mario Molina, a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, who shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1995. “It is extremely clear that it is much more important to make the use of masks mandatory than just isolating and social distancing, (because) you can decrease cases much more efficiently.”
Hirji said the evidence of the efficacy of face coverings has been steadily growing since the pandemic began. That is why, he said, more recent public health guidance changed regarding masks, and how the public is asked to wear them whenever physical distancing is difficult.
However, he said no randomized, controlled studies on the ability of masks to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus have been completed.
Without that kind of compelling evidence, Hirji said he would be reluctant to issue the type of order handed down by his counterpart in Guelph, who made masks mandatory for customers and staff in businesses.
Hirji said while he has the authority to issue such an order, he regards that power to be best applied to specific circumstances, such as an outbreak at a nursing home. A society-wide order, he said, should come from elected officials that would draw on medical advice, rather than from appointed officials like himself.
St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik, however, said he was “frustrated” with Hirji’s position, noting the Guelph medical officer of health has no such issues in making the masking order. He also said Niagara’s patchwork of municipal councils would make it difficult to ensure such an order was in place across the region without the public health department’s authority.
“I’m disappointed we wouldn’t be hearing something a little stronger from our own director of public health about the wearing of masks. It would be kind of silly if we’ve been following the same directions as a region for three months and all of a sudden, if you go to Niagara-on-the-lake you don’t have to wear a mask but if you go to Thorold you have to wear a mask but if you go to Pelham you don’t have to wear a mask,” Sendzik said.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati meanwhile, said that unless the province makes wearing a mask mandatory, the city won’t force businesses to require them.