Several shoppers and employees at a busy supermarket in Florida went maskless in defiance of a county’s mandate.
A 15-second clip posted on Twitter on Wednesday shows only a few shopping and virtually no employees wearing face masks at an Oakes Farms Market in Naples. There’s a sign outside the customers that is exempt from Collier County’s mask mandate if they have a medical condition.
One maskless female employee is seen laughing at a customer who is also not wearing a mask, while two workers and another patron were at another locker without personal protective equipment, according to the footage.
Some of the employees and customers appear to be older than 65, who are at greater risk of death or hospitalization if they are diagnosed with COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those 85 and older are at greatest risk.
A woman who tweeted that she lives just minutes from the supermarket posted a photo of a sign allegedly placed outside, which says workers will “assume” that customers without masks have a medical condition which exempts them from the mandate.
“It’s absolutely amazing to see the lack of Covid procedures everywhere in that store,” the tweet read in part. “No employees wear masks, they still sell Trump merchandise outside, and they have this sign when you first walk in.”
According to the COVID-19 dashboard in Florida, more than 1.74 million cases of coronavirus have been diagnosed nationwide, resulting in 27,019 deaths.
In Collier County, where a mask mandate is said to last until April, 413 deaths were reported among more than 28,000 cases.
The owner of the supermarket, Alfie Oakes, filed a federal lawsuit in November against the constitutionality of the province’s mask order, reports the Naples Daily News.
A federal judge on Wednesday filed the case, alleging that the province’s order violated the Oakes’ first and fourteenth amendment rights. Oakes claims that the mandate is “selectively applied” and claims that he is being targeted because of his political views, the newspaper reports.
Oakes apparently called the virus a ‘fraud’ and was an outspoken opponent of the mask order. A message to comment from Oaks Farms Market representatives was not returned Thursday.