Snohomish County residents under watch in mask compliance survey

If you live in Snohomish County, you may have recently noticed a sign or person letting you know they were observing how many people were wearing masks in public spaces.

Ten ham radio volunteers worked with the county’s department of emergency management to station themselves at 37 different locations around the county. The volunteers made 3,500 observations of people with or without masks at commercial settings, a transit center, and urban parks.

Washington state mask wearing improving, but still short of key benchmark

“Doing this mask survey was fun and entertaining at times,” said Steve Davison, with the Snohomish County Office of Emergency Management.

Davison told stories of what the volunteers encountered. In one case, a group of teenagers saw the volunteers and then sat down to put on their masks before entering a store. In another, two women outside a store saw an elderly man about to enter a store without a mask. They stopped him to talk and went back to their car to get him a mask.

He said the volunteers noticed more men than women return to their cars to get a mask before entering a commercial location. Most people wore masks into a grocery store. In Monroe, observers noted great mask compliance as people entered big box stores.

At a beach park in Lake Stevens, mask compliance was nearly non-existent.

“We saw hundreds of people there, shoulder-to-shoulder in the water,” Davison said. “We only saw one mask.”

It was noticed that more people at the transit center wore masks during the evening commute. In the morning, more people were smoking, vaping, and drinking coffee while waiting.

The county reported excellent mask compliance at commercial settings, very good compliance at the transit center (73-96%), and moderately good compliance at urban parks (67-71%).

Gov. Inslee’s mask mandate took effect July 7. Businesses in Washington state are not allowed to serve a customer who is not wearing a mask, and they may ask customers to leave.

“This is not an optional plan for businesses,” the governor said. “This is a legal requirement. This is not merely a suggestion. If you go to a business and you’re not complying with this, the business cannot legally serve you.”

Any business who refuses to enforce the order could face fines or a loss of a their business license.

The UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is tracking mask usage with a series of maps, detailing the progress states like Washington have made in increasing the frequency of mask wearing.

The IHME estimates that almost 2,500 lives could be saved by Dec. 1 with universal mask acceptance in Washington state. Nationwide, that number jumps up to roughly 160,000 fewer COVID-19 deaths by December with 95% mask wearing.

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