Sign this petition to tell Premier Peter Malinauskas and the SA government that April 14 is too soon to drop the mask mandate for public indoor spaces.

We know that masking helps to protect ourselves and others from catching or spreading COVID. We have a better understanding of how COVID spreads and more tools now to manage this pandemic than we did two years ago. Masking in public indoor spaces is one of those tools, and it makes no sense to drop masking requirements now as cases in SA hit new record highs and other public health measures are being dropped. Allowing COVID to spread unchecked throughout SA will only increase the likelihood of developing new, potentially more deadly or disabling, variants. 

Children under 5 years of age are ineligible for a COVID vaccine. Children under two years of age are generally unable to wear masks. Children in classrooms are catching COVID in the hundreds of cases. Why should the health of young children be put at risk for the sake of politics? Dropping mask mandates at this time is not a decision based in science. Masking also helps to protect people who are more vulnerable to long-term illness or death should we contract COVID.  No one should be forced to have to stay at home because a few people are too selfish to wear masks.

Not to mention, masking helps protect the health care system which is already straining after two years of pandemic - doctors and nurses are wearing masks all day, every day, and working themselves to the bone to care for people with COVID - the least we can do to support them is to keep wearing masks in indoor public spaces.

COVID is a public health problem and needs public health measures to curb the spread. No amount of wishful thinking and “individual responsibility” is going to end this pandemic. We all need to keep masking!