All Orange County residents are required to wear face masks beginning Saturday, June 20, until further notice.
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings announced in a June 18 press conference that beginning Saturday, June 20, at 12:01 a.m., all Orange County and city of Orlando residents are required to wear face masks when outside and in public spaces, whether working, living or visiting.
“The executive order is in the best interest of all businesses, especially the bars and restaurants,” Demings said. “We do not want to experience another shutdown within our community.”
This comes as Florida documented on June 14 its record-breaking daily high in positive COVID-19 tests with 4,049 cases reported.
The new mask regulations will not be enforced through the police, but instead Mayor Demings and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer are asking for voluntary compliance. Businesses that are found to not be cooperating with the new face mask regulations will be addressed in a different manner.
Those who are exempt from the required face coverings are the following:
- Those under two years old; or
- Those who have an existing health condition which the face covering would cause impairment; or
- Those persons who work in a profession without face-to-face interaction with the public; or
- Those persons working in a profession where using a face mask will not be compatible with the job duties; or
- Those exercising while still observing social distancing and CDC guidelines.
Read the full executive order here.
“We have been deliberate at this phase of not saying that it carries a criminal penalty because that’s not the goal,” Demings said. “In the world that we live in now, with the potential conflict between law enforcement and the community, we’re certainly not trying to create an environment where we want law enforcement to get into enforcing – what I call – maybe minor violations of law.”
In contrast, Seminole County will not be requiring residents to wear face masks, the county announced Friday.
Instead, Seminole County will be issuing a new phase of public service announcements called “Help Yourself, Help Your Neighbors” through billboards and social media campaigns that educate the public on the importance of face masks and social distancing.
Osceola County began issuing requirements on face masks on April 13. In the first 24 hours of the requirement taking effect, Osceola County was issuing fines for those who violated the face mask requirements; however, officials stopped issuing fines because it wasn’t in the spirit of the ordinance.
Currently, Florida has 89,748 positive cases of coronavirus and 3,104 deaths across the state, according to the Florida Department of Health.
The Florida Department of Health states that there have been a total of 1,532,871 tests done throughout the state with 1,443,123 tests returning negative for coronavirus.
