What to do with face masks will be one of the topics of discussion during tonight's Sioux Falls City Council meeting.

The city's current mask mandate has been in effect now for 102 days and is set to expire on March 13th. The topic of extending the Sioux Falls mask mandate will be up for discussion again during the (March 2) City Council meeting.

Dakota News Now reports the mandate originally went into effect on November 21st and was extended by the council during a 6 to 2 vote in late December. Now the city has another big decision to make as the pandemic lingers on.

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Like with almost everything in life, there are multiple schools of thought regarding this particular issue. Some people are firm believers that wearing masks help stop the spread of COVID-19, while others are not so sure and believe it's more of a control issue.

Council members have contrasting opinions on the matter as well. Sioux Falls City Council member Greg Neitzert told Dakota News Now, “I would hope that we just trust people to make their own choices when it comes to their health and that we would lift the mandate. The numbers starting dropping before the mandate went into effect and before we voted on it."

While council member Pat Starr believes we need to continue wearing masks. He told Dakota News Now, “I think it’s gone really well and I think we’ve seen it. I think there are some places where we haven’t done as good of a job, but now we’ve worked really hard to get the numbers to come down and what we’re hearing from the CDC even today is that we’re kind of at a plateau that’s not at a really good spot."

Starr would like to see the mandate extended until people in Group 1D are fully vaccinated. Group 1D includes: people age 65 and older and people receiving care for transplant.

Regardless of which side of the mask aisle you find yourself on, the topic of extending the city's mandate will once again be up for review during tonight's first reading starting at 6 at Carnegie Town Hall.

Source: Dakota News Now

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Stacker used data from the 2020 County Health Rankings to rank every state's average life expectancy from lowest to highest. The 2020 County Health Rankings values were calculated using mortality counts from the 2016-2018 National Center for Health Statistics. The U.S. Census 2019 American Community Survey and America's Health Rankings Senior Report 2019 data were also used to provide demographics on the senior population of each state and the state's rank on senior health care, respectively.

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