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Manchester Public Health Director Anna Thomas is never seen in public these days without a face mask, which she wears as a public health measure and not to conceal her identity from opponents of a proposed mask mandate ordinance aimed at limiting contagion from COVID-19.
The ordinance would require anyone in a public or government building or any enclosed space to have a cloth covering over nose and mouth at all times “except where the person can safely maintain a distance of six feet or greater from all other persons located therein.” School buildings are included, though children under 10 would be exempt. The mandate would also apply to residents and visitors in residential and commercial buildings when in “common areas and communal spaces.”
Thomas has been with the Manchester Health Department for 28 years and has been director since 2018. The department has nearly 70 full- and part-time employees, with an annual budget of $7.5 million. She presented the proposed ordinance on Sept. 2 to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, where it received mixed reviews. The proposal was still pending when the interview below was conducted.
Q. What are you hearing from proprietors of local business establishments about the proposed ordinance?
A. The mix of what I’ve heard is mostly from employees who wish there were a mask mandate so they are protected from members of the public who do not wear masks. The other thing I hear from business owners is they don’t have to be the bad guys; they don’t have to police it. If there were a mask mandate, it would fall on city departments to police it.
Q. The proposed ordinance says the police, fire and health departments will have the enforcement powers. How would the police enforce a mask ordinance?
A. We put the police in there because there may be a scenario in which the police are responding to a multitude of other issues and responding to the mask mandate as well. Our priority would be Health and Fire as the two responding agencies.
Q. What would trigger a citation?
A. A business owner calls and says, “There’s an unmasked man in my store”?
If there are multiple instances of violations and someone files a complaint, we would go and investigate, as we do with any other complaint. I think it would be highly unusual to target an individual. The end game is that we want universal mask-wearing, and the ordinance gives you a way of enforcing that, if and when you need to.
Q. Nashua and Concord have adopted citywide mask mandates. How many other New Hampshire cities have done the same?
A. As of Sept. 1, there were 13. Some are more enforceable than others.
Q. You’ve noted that 34 states have statewide mask mandates and New Hampshire is the only New England state without one. The “Live Free Or Die” state has a history of resisting mandates, such as a seat belt law for adults and helmets for motorcyclists. Would you anticipate similar resistance to a statewide mask mandate?
A. Yes. I’m going to pretty much echo what Governor Sununu said publicly. He has been quoted as saying that some New Hampshire communities have had virtually no cases of the Covid virus, so measures like a face mask mandate can be dealt with on a local or regional basis. The governor’s guidelines do, however, ban gatherings of more than 100 people,
Q. How many cases of COVID-19 have been discovered in Manchester?
A. As of Sept. 14, , there were 2,003. Statewide, it’s 7,696. So Manchester has had 26 percent of the cases in the state.
Q. And how many reported deaths from it?
A. In Manchester, 115. Statewide, it’s 436.
Q. And how have you been dealing with that?
A. At the Health Department, we have an entire team of nurses in a branch for infectious diseases. They do all of the case investigations, the contact tracing, the cluster investigation when there are three or more cases in the same location, as is often the case with our long-term care facilities, where 82 percent of our deaths have occurred.
We’ve gone to great lengths to remedy that, with everything from universal use of personal protective equipment to not allowing the public to visit, to limiting the commingling of residents. The group activities have to be basically managed.
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