Skip to main content

Mask Up - It's the Law!

Mask Up - It's the Law!
By Kristen Holland

You may hear a new announcement on our vehicles or see new messages about masks being required by federal law. The spread of COVID-19 has led the federal government to enact a mask requirement for all public transportation conveyances. Here in San Francisco, that law means wearing a mask in Muni stations, when purchasing a ticket and while waiting for, boarding, riding or exiting transit. Failure to wear a mask can result in denial of boarding, removal from Muni and may carry federal penalties.

Muni customers are doing great when it comes to mask compliance, which consistently exceeds 95% (see chart). You get it. Wearing masks, physically distancing and riding Muni for only essential trips remain crucial to reducing the spread of COVID-19.

Chart showing 97 percent mask compliance and 3 percent partial compliance for the week of 1/25/2021

The SFMTA mask survey for the final week of January 2021 reported 97% compliance

And every week, our operators, fare inspectors and ambassadors hand out thousands of masks to those who don’t have one. Thank you for protecting our employees and each other.

The SFMTA distributed 5,556 masks to employees and 10,375 masks to the public during the first week of February 2021

During the first week of February 2021, the SFMTA distributed nearly 16,000 masks

Here’s more on the new law:

The federal mask requirement went into effect earlier this month and will continue until May 2021.

As a reminder, a properly worn mask:

  • Completely covers the nose and mouth of the wearer
  • Is secured to the head, including with ties or ear loops
  • Fits snugly against the side of the face.

Face shields do not fulfill the requirements of the law. Instead, masks should be a solid piece of material without slits, exhalation valves, or punctures. Face coverings like scarves and bandanas do not meet this requirement. Visit the CDC website for tips on improving your mask to protect yourself and others.

Like other mask requirements, the law allows for some exemptions and exceptions. For example, the temporary removal of a mask is allowed in order to:

  • Take oral medications for brief periods.
  • Communicate with a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, when the ability to see the mouth is essential for communication.

The specifics of the federal law are outlined in the Transportation Security Administration Security Directive.

All state and local public health orders remain in effect.  For more information, visit SFMTA.com/COVID or call 311 within San Francisco or 415-701-4311. Free language assistance available.

 

 

 

 



Published February 16, 2021 at 11:24PM
https://ift.tt/37nngSe

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Women Pioneers at Muni: Adeline Svendsen and Muni’s First Newsletter

Women Pioneers at Muni: Adeline Svendsen and Muni’s First Newsletter By Jeremy Menzies To close out Women’s History Month, here’s a look back at one woman whose work to bring Muni staff together in the late 1940s created a legacy that lives on to this day. Adeline “Addy” Svendsen was founding editor of Muni’s first internal newsletter, “ Trolley Topics .” Adeline Svendsen sits at her desk in the Geneva Carhouse office building in this 1949 shot. Trolley Topics was a new venture when it started in February 1946. As Svendsen wrote in the first issue it was created, “to bring a little fun, a little news, and a lot of good will to all our fellow employees in the Railway.” Just two years prior in 1944, Muni merged with the Market Street Railway Company, expanding the small municipal operation into the largest transit provider in the city with hundreds of employees, vehicles of every shape and size, and dozens of facilities scattered across town. The newsletter was meant to help unite ...

Show HN: StreetComplete, an OpenStreetMap Editor for Humans https://ift.tt/2J8IL02

Show HN: StreetComplete, an OpenStreetMap Editor for Humans StreetComplete is an OpenStreetMap[0] editor directed at people who want to contribute and want to do this using their smartphone, without learning how to edit things[1]. It is available as an Android application. It is intended to be used as one walks, with quests appearing as markers on the map. Selecting a marker allows one to answer a simple question. The answer will be added to the OpenStreetMap database, with app handling selecting objects for editing, transforming answer into OSM tags and making edits. OpenStreetMap account is needed to apply edits, but it is possible to start without it, make some edits and login/register later. Note: I am not the main author, but I am one of the active contributors. Github page is at https://ift.tt/2g8lasH and https://ift.tt/3nR9PzS shows what was recently released. [0]OpenStreetMap is a Wikipedia of maps, available on the open licence. This dataset is already used for many interestin...

Show HN: Launch VM workloads securely and instantaneously, without VMs https://ift.tt/2QwJ1Kd

Show HN: Launch VM workloads securely and instantaneously, without VMs Hello HN! We've been working on a new hypervisor https://kwarantine.xyz that can run strongly isolated containers. This is still a WIP, but we wanted to give the community an idea about our approach, its benefits, and various use cases it unlocks. Today, VMs are used to host containers, and make up for the lack of strong security as well as kernel isolation in containers. This work adds this missing security piece in containers. We plan on launching a free private beta soon. Meanwhile, we'd deeply appreciate any feedback, and happy to answer any questions here or on our slack channel. Thanks! April 29, 2021 at 07:50AM