North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced a new order Wednesday to further ease public health mandates to limit the spread of COVID-19, while urging people to continue getting vaccinated against the virus.

Cooper’s latest executive order, set to go into effect on Friday, will scale back the requirement of wearing masks while outdoors while still requiring them indoors as a spread prevention method. The move is similar to guidance shared by the federal Centers for Disease Control on Tuesday, which said fully vaccinated people are safe to not wear masks when outdoors.

Cooper also said the executive order will further scale back mass gathering limits, allowing for increases to 100 people indoors and 200 outdoors.

Last week, Cooper announced plans to lift all mandatory social distancing, capacity and mass gathering restrictions on June 1. This latest executive order follows the trend set by North Carolina to scale back on COVID-19 restrictions while encouraging residents to get vaccinated.

But as the state starts to withdraw restrictions, some will remain in place — chiefly, wearing masks in indoor settings.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, said North Carolina will not lift the face mask requirement for indoor settings until at least two-thirds of adults in the state have at least one dose of the vaccine and COVID-19 trends are stable.

As of Wednesday, data from NCHHS shows that about 39 percent of adults in North Carolina are fully vaccinated and nearly 50 percent have received at least one dose.

The governor also restated his goal of fully lifting capacity and mass gathering restrictions, as well as social distancing requirements, by June 1.

“That is the plan,” Cooper said, “It would be great if we had two-thirds vaccinated by then, but we probably won’t, [so] we will still on June 1 continue the indoor mask mandate. When we get to two-thirds vaccinated, we’re hoping to lift the indoor mask mandate. That’s our goal and we look forward to that day.”

 

Photo courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety.

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