Beaufort City Council passed an extension of its mask/face covering emergency ordinance at its regular council meeting on Tuesday night.
Masks will be required until April 9th in buildings that can be accessed by the public, including shops, offices, restaurants, etc. The ordinance requires that employees and the public wear masks to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, unless there is a medical reason that prevents someone from wearing a mask.
The ordinance says:
All persons entering any building open to the public in the City must wear a face covering while inside the building.
All restaurants, retail establishments of every description, salons, grocery stores, and pharmacies in the municipal limits of the City shall require their employees to wear a Face Covering at all times that the employees are in any area where the general public is allowed or when the employees must be in close proximity to one another. This requirement also applies to all persons providing or utilizing public or commercial transportation, including tours; and all businesses or employees while interacting with people in outdoor spaces, including, but not limited to, curbside pickup, delivery, and service calls.
Also, earlier in the week, Beaufort County voted to not renew its mask ordinance which means that face coverings are longer ordered in the unincorporated areas within the county. Please note that Beaufort, Bluffton, Port Royal and Hilton Head all have ordinances in place which cover most of the unincorporated areas of the county.
The State Department of Health & Environmental Control has published several studies showing that masks are effective. It compared jurisdictions in South Carolina that required masks to jurisdictions that did not, and found that the rate of disease spread was slower where masks were required.
