COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – The Panhandle Health District voted 4-3 to extend a mask mandate until April 22, 2021.
The mask mandate applies to all residents living in the five counties that make up North Idaho. Those counties include Kootenai, Bonner, Benewah, Boundary and Shoshone Counties.
To read the health district’s entire mask mandate, you can click here.
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COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – The Panhandle Health District voted on Thursday to reinstate the mask mandate, which now applies to all residents living in the five North Idaho counties.
The board voted 4-2 in favor of the mandate, with board member Walt Kirby abstaining from the vote. Outside the board meeting, Idaho residents protested the vote and the mandate by the board.
The mandate will be in effect until January, in which the board will then reassess the mandate in a future meeting. People who violate the mandate can face a misdemeanor charge, a $1,000 fine, and/or up to six months in jail.
The board cited Idaho’s incident rate as one of the leading factors in the vote to approve a new mandate. The incident rate in the state of Idaho sits at 4,837 cases per 100,000 people, while in Washington the incident rate is 1,769 per 100,000 people. With a far greater population in Washington than in Idaho, there are roughly 2.7 times the amount of positive cases per capita in Idaho.
The five counties impacted by the mandate are Bonner, Boundary, Benewah, Shoshone and Kootenai.
