The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, along with several businesses, will keep mask requirements in place even though Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order Friday ending the statewide mask mandate.
For the near future at least, Minnesotans are likely to face a patchwork of different rules about mask-wearing, making the face covering still an essential item to carry in cars, pockets, purses or backpacks when needed to gain entry beyond the "Masks are required" sign.
At a time when case growth, test positivity rates and hospitalization rates have been decreasing but remain above cautionary levels set by state health officials, the removal of mask mandates could set the stage for more infections in those places where masks are few and far between.
"Our steady but quite gradual reduction in these rates has continued for several weeks but still do indicate that we have a lot of virus circulating in our communities," Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said.
While new vaccinations are increasing but "not as quickly as we would like," Malcolm said, "we're hopeful that those favorable trends are more powerful than the added risks that we know exist when more interaction happens."
Health equity advocates are concerned that removing the mask mandate will negatively affect the Black, Indigenous and Hispanic communities, where vaccination rates are among the state's lowest.
Schools will need to follow masking guidelines until the end of the school year, while salons and barbershops can go without them, unless they are in a city that still mandates their use.
Under federal law, face masks must still be worn on buses, trains, airplanes and at transit hubs. But Duluth said Friday that it would end its requirements while Edina, where a mandate expired last year, said it would not enact a new one.
