PITTSBORO — Pittsboro’s indoor mask mandate ended at 5 p.m. Tuesday after its reinstatement in late September.
COVID-19 cases throughout N.C. have recently seen a downward trend, including in Chatham County. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 County Dashboard, Chatham’s positivity rate is at 3%, below the 5% goal the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services has established.
However, the CDC has also penned Chatham County as an area of “substantial transmission.” The federal agency suggests Chatham residents should continue to wear their masks indoors to lower the community spread.
“In Chatham County, North Carolina, community transmission is Substantial Transmission,” the CDC’s COVID-19 County Check tool on its website says. “Everyone should wear a mask in public indoor settings.”
Pittsboro originally reinstated its mask mandate in September after a rise in COVID-19 cases across Chatham County, thanks to the Delta variant. Chatham COVID numbers have since decreased, paving the way for Pittsboro to end its masking requirements, Mayor Jim Nass said in the town’s latest news release.
“As a result of improving COVID-19 trends since the amendment was entered,” Nass said, “the undersigned determines that in consideration of all available data related to the impacts of COVID-19 in the Town of Pittsboro, the Amended Proclamation of a State of Emergency related to COVID-19 heretofore entered on Sept. 24, 2021, is no longer necessary and is therefore rescinded and terminated.”