Alabama Gov.\u00a0Kay Ivey\u00a0(R) said Thursday she will extend her state’s mask mandate for another month, a contrast with decisions from governors in Texas and Mississippi to lift orders.<\/p>\n
Ivey noted that coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have fallen but said the time is not yet right to lift the mask order.<\/p>\n
“Even with this positive news, Dr. Harris & I believe more Alabamians need to get their 1st shot before we take a step some other states have taken to remove the mask order altogether & lift all restrictions,” she wrote on Twitter, referring to state health officer Scott Harris. “Folks, we\u2019re not there yet, but we’re getting close.”<\/p>\n
Why it matters:\u00a0<\/strong>The move sets up a split between Southern Republican governors on mask mandates and could be an indication more GOP governors will not follow Texas and Mississippi’s leads right away.<\/p>\n Alabama’s mask order will remain until April 9, after which Ivey said it would not be extended. She notably defended the effectiveness of the order.<\/p>\n “The bottom line is we have kept the mask mandate in place for more than a generous period of time because it has helped,” she wrote. “And as a result of the people of our state doing their part, we have seen dramatic results & real progress being made.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alabama Gov.\u00a0Kay Ivey\u00a0(R) said Thursday she...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32385,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32384\/revisions\/32385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}