The mask man­date will no longer be in ef­fect come Sun­day, Ju­ly 17, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Speak­ing at a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh in­di­cat­ed that the le­gal re­quire­ment will be lift­ed in favour of rec­om­men­da­tions by the Min­istry of Health that peo­ple will now choose to fol­low based on their per­son­al risk as­sess­ment. He said the min­istry is still iron­ing out the de­tails of the rec­om­men­da­tions, but he ex­pects the fi­nal guid­ance will be an­nounced next Wednes­day.

Al­though still be­ing tai­lored, Deyals­ingh said the rec­om­men­da­tions will be based on a few fac­tors.

“The risk-based rec­om­men­da­tions are go­ing to be based on your vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus, your med­ical his­to­ry, your age, your house­hold. Do I live with a lot of peo­ple who are im­muno­com­pro­mised?” he said.

This is why he said the guid­ance will ad­vise that four groups of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple con­tin­ue wear­ing masks. These are those who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed, the im­muno­com­pro­mised, the el­der­ly and preg­nant women.

He said rec­om­men­da­tions will al­so be made that masks be worn in cer­tain set­tings, such as geri­atric homes, chil­dren’s homes, in­door con­gre­ga­tions, pub­lic trans­port, aero­planes and dur­ing re­li­gious ser­vices.

There have been pre­vi­ous calls from par­ents to re­move masks for chil­dren in schools. How­ev­er, while the man­date is be­ing lift­ed, this is still un­der the min­istry’s con­sid­er­a­tion.

“We are go­ing to be pay­ing at­ten­tion to all the da­ta be­tween now and school open­ing, but for now and for the next cou­ple of months from...Sun­day 17th Ju­ly, the mask man­date is off and we will cross that bridge with schools based on the da­ta we have then,” he said.

“So hope­ful­ly, once the da­ta con­tin­ues to be good and if more and more peo­ple get vac­ci­nat­ed, then we will make fur­ther rec­om­men­da­tions.”

While there will be a shift to­ward per­son­al choice in wear­ing masks, the Min­is­ter of Health said they will re­main manda­to­ry in health­care fa­cil­i­ties.

“The new reg­u­la­tions that will come out will still have mask­ing as a fea­ture, a manda­to­ry fea­ture at health­care fa­cil­i­ties,” he said.

“So you go in­to a hos­pi­tal, a clin­ic, a health­care fa­cil­i­ty—mask­ing will be re­quired.”

Deyals­ingh as­sured that the coun­try’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem had the ca­pac­i­ty to bear any in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es due to end­ing the man­date.

“Our hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions have been hov­er­ing around 100, 120 for a while, we have now dipped be­low 100, our ICU lev­els are very, very low,” he said.

“That is why we are mak­ing this de­ci­sion at this time be­cause we feel if we get any spike in cas­es that the health­care sys­tem has more than enough ca­pac­i­ty, at this point in time, to cope with that.”

The mask man­date was in­sti­tut­ed on Au­gust 31, 2020, and has been one of the longest-stand­ing re­stric­tions un­der the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions dur­ing the course of the pan­dem­ic.