Air travel has been one of the last hold outs. The mask mandate is still in effect in the United States, even though it was recently extended. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, over the last year, 922 people who didn't wear masks received fines from the Transportation Security Administration.
Several major British airlines have lifted their mask requirements in the past few weeks, as have several other airports.
A woman who identified herself as a flight attendant from Yorkshire, England, said that it was her first flight without a mask.
The International Air Transport Association, which represents nearly 300 airlines, and the U.S. Travel Association, an industry group, have been lobbying the White House not to extend the mandate further. Some travel health experts and passengers say that airplane cabins and airports should take a more careful approach.
Rebecca Kift, a clinical biochemist from Yorkshire, England, had no idea that the British airline had lifted its mask requirement until she boarded her flight to Manchester from Spain. Her mother is being treated for cancer and she has been avoiding crowded indoor situations for months. She was in a cabin full of flight attendants and passengers and she didn't think it was fair.
There is a confusing state of mask wear in the sky.
England did not have a governmental mask mandate for air travel. Most British airlines and airports began requiring masks in June 2020, when Britain started mandating masks on other forms of transport.
Some airports and airlines have suspended their mask rules, among them being London's Heathrow Airport, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Both airlines said that wearing a mask was a personal choice, and that the shift only applies to destinations with no mask requirements.
They aren't the first airlines to allow bare faces. Passengers began flying without face coverings on two additional British airlines, Jet2 and TUI Airway, last October.
If the departure and destination countries have different restrictions, the country with the stricter rule sets the policy in the sky. People flying between England and Northern Ireland on the same airline as people flying between England and the US would not have to wear a mask.
Mexico, St. Lucia, the Bahamas and Jamaica do not currently have mask requirements in the air. The United States, Scotland, Italy and China are some of the countries that still require masks on planes.
A traveler might have to wear a mask if the airport rules are more strict than the plane rules. According to the Airports Council International, airports in England, Norway and Denmark are outliers when it comes to lifting mask requirements.
If the White House does not extend the federal mask mandate further, it will be a big deal. Some flight attendants think that the mask rule is not worth the trouble, while others think that it is important to keep medically vulnerable travelers safe.
It depends on who you ask.
There are different case count numbers across the world. Case numbers in the United States have fallen in recent weeks. Canada has its lowest number of cases since December. In many places, cases are rising. The case counts hit their highest point in nearly a month as England moved away from airport and airline mask mandates. Some parts of Asia and Europe are being hit by a highly transmissible subvariant. On Sunday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden Administration's top adviser on the Pandemic, predicted that the United States would eventually see a similar number of cases.
Leonard Marcus is the director of Harvard's Aviation Public Health Initiative and he said that covid is not over. It's too soon for Dr. Marcus to have an opinion on whether the federal mask mandate should be extended. He said that it will be difficult to get a mask mandate back.
Proponents of ending mask mandates argue that case counts are irrelevant if vaccines prevent serious disease.
In a statement announcing the end of its mask requirement last week, Heathrow Airport embodied this line of thinking, mentioning the strong protection provided by vaccination programs around the world and an embrace of learning to live.
Proponents of mask mandates point out that not everyone on a plane can depend on vaccines to protect them from Covid infections, and that the people they live with from severe Covid infections can't depend on vaccines to protect them.
The air on many planes is refreshed every two to three minutes. Airlines have argued that the risk of being bitten should be lower in packed indoor settings than it is outside. The president-elect of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene said that it should be lower than in the airport or on crowded bridges to a plane.
The low-risk environment for transmission has been made safer by travel testing requirements.
Some researchers have pointed out that if you are sitting close to a person who has recently released a virus, you could still be breathing in it.
Travel experts say yes. The chair of a group focused on responsible travel said that there are examples of coronaviruses transmission on planes before mandatory mask policies arrived.
It may be argued that the most effective measure to date has been mandatory masking in-flight.
Dr. Freedman said the same thing. He said he would wear his N95 the whole flight once the mandate was over.
The value of masks has been emphasized by some airlines and airports that have lifted mask mandates. Even without the requirement, Emma Gilthorpe still would recommend wearing them.
The C.D.C. still advises people to stay in their homes for five days if they test positive. Some people will still get on a plane if they test positive. They should wear a good mask to reduce the risk of transmission.
In East Asia, if a person had a cold or flu, wearing a mask in public was a standard way of showing respect, as noted by Emma Teng, a professor of Asian Civilization at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She believes that the Pandemic could have a lasting effect on how Americans approach masks.
The mask mandate in the United States has elicited mixed feelings from parents of children under 5. The vaccine for the coronaviruses is only available to children over 5 years old, making it hard for parents to place their child in a mask. Many parents think the rule that requires children as young as 2 to wear a mask is unreasonable.
Under 3 is not realistic for a mother who was kicked off a plane with her son in September after he pulled down his mask. She doesn't know where she stands on a mask mandate for adults, but she would be happy if he didn't have to wear it.
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