Murphy doesn’t ‘foresee any mandates’ in N.J. over COVID as NYC urges people to wear masks
Murphy #Murphy
Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday he doesn’t have plans to reinstate any coronavirus restrictions in New Jersey as the number of cases continue to rise in the state and New York City health officials say people there should wear masks indoors again.
Murphy dropped the state’s mask mandate in schools in early 2022 and ended the rule requiring face coverings on NJ Transit a couple of months later. Other than continuing to require masks in health care settings, those were the last places in New Jersey people were required to mask up.
The state has not mandated masks in private businesses since May 2021.
But with cases on the rise, Murphy says he has no plans to change course despite New York City officials urging people to wear masks.
“I don’t foresee any mandates in New Jersey unless something drastically changes,” he said at an unrelated public event Monday in Dover.
“I think people should just use their commonsense and do the basic stuff like get vaccinated, get boosted, if you’re not feeling well — certainly if you test positive — take yourself off the field and that to me remains the right sensible, commonsense advice,” the Democratic governor added. “We don’t want to mandate things that we can’t enforce and I don’t think the market is going to bear that.”
“If it changes dramatically, we reserve the right, obviously. But I don’t foresee that happening.”
New Jersey on Monday reported another 1,199 COVID-19 cases and 10 confirmed deaths.
The statewide rate of transmission was 1.12, down from 1.44 on Friday. A transmission rate below 1 is an indication that the outbreak is declining since each new case is leading to less than one additional case. A transmission rate of 1 means the number of cases have leveled off, while anything above 1 indicates the outbreak is expanding.
New Jersey’s seven-day average for confirmed positive tests is 1,881, up 9% from a week ago and up 33% from a month ago. That’s still well below the seven-day average from Dec. 12, 2021 of 3,657 confirmed positive tests.
The CDC now considers Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties to have “high” community levels of COVID-19. The remaining 18 counties in the state have “medium” transmission levels.
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
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