City council to consider extending Oklahoma City’s mask ordinance

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – City leaders in Oklahoma City will soon decide whether or not to extend the city’s mask ordinance again.

On July 17, the Oklahoma City Council approved a mandatory mask ordinance for indoor public places within the city limits.

Under the ordinance, most citizens in Oklahoma City are required to wear a mask while inside public buildings, with a few exceptions.

The ordinance went into effect immediately and was originally set to last until Sept. 8, but the council voted to extend the ordinance several times.

For months, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt has stressed the importance of wearing a mask in public.

Once the ordinance went into effect, Holt said that the ordinance was causing the city’s COVID-19 cases to drop.

In recent weeks, it appears as though there has been a resurgence in COVID-19 cases across the globe, which is having a negative impact in Oklahoma City.

Holt stressed that one out of every 100 people in the metro tested positive for COVID-19 in the last month.

“Thanks to the mask mandate, our cases, despite the fact that they’re going up, are not going up as much as cities that don’t have a mask mandate. The state puts out documentation and data that demonstrates that every week; that cities in Oklahoma with a mask mandate have fewer transmissions than those that don’t. But yeah, that doesn’t matter, we’re still going up so much. We have got to get this under control,” Holt told KFOR earlier this month.

At this point in the pandemic, Holt says that cases are out of control.

“You’ve got to go into any restaurant or any room in this city right now and assume that somebody in that room has got COVID-19 actively,” said Holt on Thursday.

Now, city leaders will again be tasked with deciding whether or not to extend the city’s mask ordinance again.

On Tuesday, the city council will decide whether or not to extend the ordinance to Jan. 22.

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