Indoor Mask Mandate Eased Starting Feb. 20 口罩令2/20起鬆綁 賣場工作人員仍戴口罩

Masks are no longer required indoors starting Feb. 20. However, the mandate would remain in place for medical and care institutions as well as on mass transportations.

After more than 800 days, Taiwan finally welcomes its ultimate relaxation of the indoor mask mandate. In places like markets and hypermarkets, the public can choose whether to wear a mask. Nevertheless, upon a quick glance, the majority of people are still wearing masks.

Citizen: “Even though the epidemic has cleared up, I feel that personal prevention is still necessary and useful.”

Citizen: “There is still a period of likely infection, so I feel that wearing a mask is still necessary.”

Citizen: “Finally, the day arrived that we no longer need to wear a mask, so now the indoor mask rule has been relaxed. I think it's great that there is a rule that says you don't need to wear a mask. I'm not wearing one.”

In contrast to wearing a mask, some people exclaim that being able to breathe fresh air without wearing a mask is awesome. The mandate would remain in place for medical and care institutions, including hospitals, pharmacies, or long-term care centers, as well as public transport or other special forms of transportation such as High Speed Rail or trains, ambulances, etc. Even though indoor mask is no longer required, hypermarkets consider the high frequency of employees facing customers on a day-to-day basis still require employees to wear a mask to work.

Chang Jun-hong, North-South Manager, Public Affairs and Services, Carrefour Taiwan: “Our employees often interact with many customers, thus in view of their health and safety, we believe as of now we'd still require them to wear masks to work. As for customers, if they are obviously coughing, or if their temperature has exceeded the normal threshold, we of course would persuade them nicely to wear a mask.”

The public is warned that if one is coughing or suffering from other symptoms, masks are still recommended. Medical experts note that the ease of indoor mask mandate is actually quite meaningless; it's better to downgrade the COVID-19 epidemic on a whole scale level to avoid waste of medical resources.
 

等了800多天，台灣終於迎來室內口罩大鬆綁，像是賣場等場所，民眾可以自主選擇戴口罩。但一眼望過去，戴口罩的民眾仍占大宗。

民眾說：「疫情雖然是明朗了，可是我覺得，個人防範還是可以多使用上。」

民眾認為：「還是有感染的期間，所以我覺得還是有需要戴口罩。」

也有民眾直言：「可以就是不用戴口罩的那一天來到，所以現在有寬鬆了室內的口罩政策。我就是覺得，好啊，有規定可以不用戴，我就沒有戴這樣子。」

相較戴口罩，也有民眾直呼不戴口罩、呼吸新鮮空氣的感覺真好。根據指揮中心公布，雖然室內口罩政策鬆綁，但民眾前往醫療照護等8類場所，仍得戴上口罩。像是醫療照護場所，包含醫院、藥局或長照機構，以及搭乘公共運輸及特殊運具，像是雙鐵或救護車等運具，都得戴口罩。雖然室內可以脫口罩，但仍有賣場業者，考量員工得常面對來往顧客，要求員工得戴口罩上班。

家樂福公共事務暨服務部北南區經理張君鴻表示：「我們員工是常常接觸到非常多的顧客來往，那其實實際上考量到我們員工這邊的一些健康安全，所以我們現在目前為止，還是會請員工配戴口罩。顧客部分，如果他有明顯咳嗽，或者是說他在測溫下來說，情況下是已經超過標準值的話，那當然我們還是柔性勸導顧客，您盡量還是配戴口罩。」

呼籲民眾，如果有咳嗽等狀況，最好還是戴上口罩，才能避免影響他人。但也有醫學專家認為，口罩解封意義不大，將新冠肺炎疫情降級，才不會造成醫療資源浪費。