CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (WHDH) - As Massachusetts reports its highest daily total of COVID-19 cases since March, another city is asking people to mask up.
Though it’s not a mandate, Cambridge city health officials are asking everyone to cover their faces if they cannot socially distance themselves.
The advisory comes with a rise in cases linked to the highly contagious Delta variant.
“I think it’s really important to wear our masks especially with the new Delta variant going around but it’s kind of tough because it’s summer and you want to have fun but we can’t yet,” one woman said.
The mask recommendation applies to everyone regardless of their vaccination status.
“I’d like to think that most people who are not vaccinated would think of everybody’s health and continue to wear their masks but now again because it is summer, people will take that into their own terms but hopefully we’ll see a lot of mask-wearing and wait for cases to go down,” another woman said.
Contracting COVID-19 is still incredibly rare among the fully vaccinated.
According to Massachusetts health officials, the total number of cases among the more than 4.3 million fully vaccinated individuals in the state – also known as breakthrough cases – is extremely low at less than .1 percent.
Provincetown also has a mask advisory in place.
State health officials say the Delta variant was present in the COVID cluster from the Fourth of July.
Doctor Rajeev Fernando is an infectious disease physician and he says he supports the mask recommendations.
“We missed the boat the last time in April, we waited too long to advocate to wear masks and look where we ended up,” he said. “So now I think it’s very important to wear masks right now. Let’s get more information let’s see how things go.”
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