When restrictions on businesses aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus are relaxed slightly in New Orleans this weekend, there will be one new rule that customers and employees alike will be required to follow. Face masks will now become mandatory.

The new rule is one of several announced by Mayor LaToya Cantrell on Tuesday that go beyond the restrictions that are in place across the rest of the state.

And they come as masks in particular have become a flashpoint for activists who have called for loosening restrictions that have so far limited the spread of the pandemic and reduced the number of new cases being recorded each day. On the other side of the spectrum, many have taken to social media to castigate residents who go out without masking up or businesses that don't encourage patrons to cover their faces.

Choosing whether to wear a mask will no longer be an option in New Orleans starting Saturday. Businesses will be required to supply their employees with covering and their patrons will be required to be masked to gain entrance. But the enforcement of those restrictions will largely fall on businesses, which has raised some concerns.

New Orleans’ stricter rules are a result of the speed and impact with which the virus spread through the city in the early days of the outbreak. As of Wednesday, 481 people in the city had died after contracting COVID-19, more than any other parish in the state.

The mask mandate aims to keep new cases from surging as more people interact in public.

“Every time you speak, tiny droplets of saliva and mucus fly out of your nose and mouth. If you aren’t wearing a mask and you have COVID, and you could be asymptomatic, those will land on other people,” said Sarah Babcock, with the city’s Health Department. “The mask is to protect other people in case you have COVID. My mask protects you and your mask protects me.”

The mandate doesn’t call for anything fancy like a surgical mask or an N95 respirator, a bandana or a torn-up t-shirt will do, Babcock said. The only requirement is that whatever is used cover the wearer’s mouth and nose.

The city has also been running a program, SewDat, that provides donated masks sewn by volunteers to those in need.

Masks will be required in almost any location where people gather outside their homes, including businesses, offices, museums and churches.

Customers will have to wear masks into restaurants and gyms but will be allowed to take them off while dining or exercising, Babcock said. That’s because of the difficulty of eating or working out while wearing a mask and additional rules that limit those locations to 25% of their capacity and require that they space customers out enough to follow social distancing guidelines.

For some, that requirement will be a welcome relief.

Sharon Rodi, a retired attorney who lives in Jefferson Parish,  has been trying to get others to wear masks and has been disappointed that there aren’t stricter requirements in place. Statewide, officials are suggesting people wear masks but not mandating, to which Rodi said, “Why encourage, why not require?”

“We don’t know where this is going to be in six months, and could it be it’ll pop up because we didn’t wear masks?” Rodi said.

If customers are found not to be wearing masks, the manager or owner could be fined, Babcock said.

Dawn Starns, the Louisiana director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said the mandate was putting business owners in a position of having to enforce government restrictions in a way that was “totally impractical and unenforceable.”

“You can’t expect a business owner to enforce the government’s policy, that’s not how this country works, it’s not how this state works either and it’s not how New Orleans should be working,” said Starns, whose group lobbies on behalf of small businesses.

People taking walks or exercising outdoors will not be required to wear masks, though Babcock said they should not come within six feet of others. It will also not apply to children under 2 or those who would have trouble breathing while covered up, Babcock said.

While an outlier in Louisiana, New Orleans’ mandate is in line with those already in place in seven states, including other hard-hit areas like New York.

But masks have been a difficult issue during the pandemic that, at times, have led to violence. On May 1, the security guard at a Dollar General in Michigan was shot to death after a dispute that started when he kicked a customer out of the store because her daughter wasn’t wearing a mask.

“That’s definitely a consideration that we need to discuss,” Babcock said. “I think that we are more concerned at this point about putting our workers at risk of COVID, that’s why we think requiring face-coverings for customers is good, because it’s going to lessen that risk for employees who aren’t going to have a choice about going back to work.”

Tay Cook, who works at a Dollar Tree in New Orleans, said she had concerns about enforcing the mandate.

“It worries me,” Cook said. “People are very hostile especially during this time. I’m not sure how they’re going to take it.”

Still Cook, a member of Step Up Louisiana, a community organization that has distributed 1,500 masks to frontline workers, said appreciated the fact that the rules were designed to protect workers like her.

“That’s pretty smart, not trying to get us infected because we’re the ones out here on the front lines trying to make sure that you all are ok,” she said.

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