Updated Tuesday, Sept. 8 at 9:00 p.m.

Arlington National Cemetery is reopening its grounds for gravesite visitation this week, although hours will be limited, some spots will remain closed, and guests will have to wear masks.

The cemetery announced Tuesday that the new protocol will go into effect on Wednesday, Sept. 9, according to a press release.

The cemetery closed to the public in mid-March as a precaution to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“As conditions in the National Capital Region have continued to improve, our goal is to provide increased access for the public to visit a loved one’s gravesite,” Karen Durham-Aguilera, the executive director of the Office of Army National Cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery, said in a statement.

Among the new measures: visiting gravesites will be allowed only between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. No buses or tour groups will be allowed in. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Memorial Amphitheater, and President John F. Kennedy Gravesite will be closed to the public, as will exhibits in the Welcome Center. Some restrooms will be available.

These new protocols do not apply to family pass holders, who can visit the graves of loved ones from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., provided they wear masks.

Bob Quackenbush, the cemetery’s deputy chief of staff, says visitors will need to go through normal security screening on the way in.

“We’re not going to be policing which grave they visit,” he tells DCist/WAMU. “We’re really just trying to keep people in and around the cemetery where they can maintain social distancing and visit a friend or a comrade’s grave.”

Quackenbush says the most noticeable change will be mandatory wearing of face coverings. He says the partial reopening will allow the cemetery to test its protocols ahead of expanding its hours “in some short time thereafter.”

Visits to the cemetery plunged to “a mere fraction” since the cemetery closed to the public, Quackenbush said. In August 2019, he said, about 10,000 people visited a day. Last month, he said, a few hundred people a day came for funerals or for family visits.

The pandemic transformed this year’s Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery and across the D.C. region.

Ordinarily, more than 135,000 people visit on Memorial Day; however, in 2020 only the families of the fallen could enter, and even those visits were curtailed by fears of flying. As a result, at least one good Samaritan visited the graves of 60 veterans whose comrades-in-arms and family couldn’t make it.

This year was also the centennial of the cemetery’s Memorial Amphitheater, the setting for the annual ceremony where the president speaks and lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The pandemic impacted this event, too. Attendees arrived wearing masks and removed them during the ceremony as they stood at a distance from one another, AP reported. President Trump did not cover his face, gave no speech, and touched a wreath that was already in place. The cemetery directed people who wanted to participate to an online exhibit rather than a face-to-face event.

This story was updated with additional comments from Arlington National Cemetery Deputy Chief of Staff Bob Quackenbush.