Hilton Head to end its mask mandate for restaurants, stores. What you need to know
Hilton Head Island leaders voted Tuesday to allow the island’s face mask requirement for businesses to expire on May 16.
Citing a decrease in COVID-19 cases and an increase in vaccination rates, the Town Council voted to end the mandate.
“It’s time we give the personal responsibility back to our residents with the caveat that we request and strongly suggest that they continue to do what they think is best: Get vaccinated, wear their masks, (and) let businesses provide services in their stores by masked employees,” Ward 4 representative Tamara Becker said.
Jeremy Clark, the CEO of Hilton Head Regional Healthcare, spoke at the Tuesday evening meeting in support of extending the mask requirement.
Hilton Head has had a mask requirement in place since July 1 for businesses, including bars and restaurants, stores, pharmacies, grocery stores and hotel lobbies.
The mandate was extended four times throughout the pandemic.
Hilton Head Town Hall is still closed to the public, and the council is meeting virtually, although council members have hinted they are anticipating a return to in-person meetings in June.
Hilton Head was the last remaining municipality in Beaufort County with a mask mandate. The Town of Bluffton and Beaufort County’s mask requirements ended April 15. The Town of Port Royal and City of Beaufort’s mask requirements ended April 30.
Three members of council, Ward 1 representative Alex Brown, Ward 2 representative Bill Harkins and Mayor John McCann, wanted to extend the mask mandate.
“Hilton Head is not like the communities around us, we’re running 1.5 million tourists a year,” McCann said. “We need to protect ourselves from the surge between now and July Fourth weekend.”
The emergency ordinance would have needed two-thirds of the council, or five members, to vote to extend it. The final vote was four in favor of ending the mask mandate and three opposed.
Businesses can still require masks on Hilton Head
Although the town-wide mask mandate will drop May 16, individual businesses can still require patrons and employees to wear face masks on the premises.
“As a private business, you can decide whether you allow customers or visitors onto your property if they are not wearing a mask. This is similar to the ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ policy that you commonly see,” according to Fisher Phillips LLP, a national law firm that focuses on employment and labor issues.
Many national retailers, for example, have company-wide mask requirements. Those rules don’t change when local governments end their mandates.
Spokespeople for CVS, Kroger and Walmart confirmed that their companies still have nationwide mask requirements for shoppers and employees, according to previous reporting from The Island Packet.
Public health recommendations
Fully vaccinated people can gather indoors without masks, according to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Residents are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second dose of either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna’s vaccines. They also are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Completely vaccinated residents can also safely gather indoors — without masks — with unvaccinated people from a different household, unless any of those unvaccinated residents, or anyone they live with, has an increased risk for serious COVID-19 complications, according to the CDC.
In indoor public spaces, meanwhile, the CDC says fully vaccinated people should continue to wear masks and avoid large gatherings.
And if a fully vaccinated person has COVID-19 symptoms, that person should get tested and stay home, health officials say.
Residents can still get infected after being fully inoculated, although that appears to be extremely rare.
This story was originally published May 4, 2021 at 5:33 PM.
