Garcetti orders use of masks
Customers, workers at many essential businesses must cover noses and mouths.
Customers and workers at most businesses must cover up starting Friday.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced an order Tuesday evening requiring all residents to wear a face covering when visiting the majority of essential businesses, in hopes that it will protect workers and slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Effective Friday, residents must wear a mask, bandanna or other type of covering over their noses and mouths when in grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, coin-operated laundry services, restaurants, hotels, taxis, ride-hail vehicles and several other essential businesses.
“Cover up, save a life — it’s that simple,” Garcetti said.
Additionally, workers at most essential businesses must wear face coverings, which business owners must either provide or reimburse workers for buying.
If a business refuses to provide face coverings for its workers, it could be fined, but the hope is that businesses and customers will follow the order without issue, Garcetti said.
The order does not require people who are exercising alone outside to wear face coverings, but instead focuses on when people are in public places where they cannot always remain six feet from others.
“Our idea is not to be arresting and fining people for the face coverings, just as if tomorrow everybody decided to jaywalk across the street, we wouldn’t have close to enough law enforcement officers or city workers to stop everybody from jaywalking,” Garcetti said. “This is about self-enforcement mostly.”
Some essential businesses are excluded from the order, but the city was working Tuesday evening to clarify which businesses those would be.
The order does not require that customers’ or workers’ face coverings be medical-grade or N95 masks. Local and state leaders continue to plead with the public to refrain from buying those masks to ensure medical and emergency workers have enough protective gear to safely perform their jobs.
“All essential, nonmedical workers required to wear these face coverings must frequently (at least once a day) wash any reusable face coverings, for the health and safety of themselves and others,” the order reads. “Single-use face coverings must be properly discarded into trash receptacles.”
But Garcetti said that if residents see someone in the grocery store or in public wearing an N95 mask, they shouldn’t assume the person is defying the order.
“There are people who are immuno-compromised who do need to wear those masks,” Garcetti said.
The mayor’s decision came the same day that the Los Angeles City Council discussed passing a similar measure.
During a Tuesday meeting, Councilman Paul Koretz donned a bandanna covering his nose and mouth and pushed for an emergency ordinance to require Angelenos to wear some kind of covering whenever they leave their homes — although he stressed that there would be no punishment for failing to do so. But a majority of council members balked at immediately pushing forward with the plan, with some raising concerns about uneven access to masks.
Later in an interview, Koretz called the mayor’s order “a big step in the right direction,” but said he would like Los Angeles to mandate masks or other facial coverings whenever Angelenos leave their homes.
Requiring facial coverings in grocery stores and other essential businesses “gets us a lot of the way there,” Koretz said, “but people still walk dogs. They still ride bicycles. They still may stop and chat with their neighbors.”
Even if the city does not ticket and fine people, he argued that if wearing masks were the law — rather than a recommendation — people would change the way they behaved through “peer pressure.”
L.A. is one of many places in California requiring face coverings in public.
The Carson City Council on Tuesday night voted to require face coverings.
Lancaster’s face covering ordinance was approved Friday.
San Bernardino County and Riverside County both in recent days ordered residents to wear face coverings for essential tasks.