D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Monday that she will lift the city’s vaccine requirement for businesses and “dial back” the city’s indoor mask rules. The announcement comes amidst falling COVID-19 case rates and an increasing number of states that have similarly eased up on pandemic restrictions as the omicron spike seems to be receding.

That includes Maryland, where Gov. Larry Hogan also announced on Monday that he was ending the indoor mask mandate for state buildings as of Feb. 22, and repeated the request first made last week that the State Board of Education rescind its masking policies for schools across the state. Virginia lawmakers are pushing forward on legislation to lift mask mandates for schools in the commonwealth.

Speaking at a press conference, Bowser said that as of Tuesday, she would lift the city’s month-old requirement that many D.C. businesses check that customers have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine before allowing them to enter. (The requirement for full vaccination was originally supposed to take effect on Tuesday.) Business will still be free to require that customers show proof of vaccination.

She also said that as of March 1 the city would no longer require that masks be worn inside businesses like restaurants, gyms, and retail establishments, though business owners would be allowed to continue to require masks themselves and the city would continue to advise people wear them. (The mandate was set to expire on Feb. 28 anyhow, though she could have extended it.)

“We are in a much better place now,” she said, noting that COVID-19 cases have decreased by more than 90% and hospitalization rates 95% since the omicron wave started. “We went into the winter and omicron… [and] we put these measures in place. We’ve seen a precipitous drop in case levels. This is where we’ve landed.”

Bowser specified that masks would still be required in schools, child care facilities, public libraries, and other congregate facilities. Additionally, the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for D.C. government workers will remain in place, as will the new requirements — set to take effect in March — that eligible school kids also get vaccinated. No decision has yet been made on whether mask mandates for schools will be lifted.

Additionally, Bowser said that as of Feb. 26, the long-running program of COVID-19 testing at designated firehouses would be discontinued. Instead, residents can use any of the new COVID Centers that have opened across the city.

The shift in both the vaccine and mask requirements in D.C. comes as a growing number of Democratic governors in states from New York to California have lifted their own mask mandates, indicating a desire to return to some level of normalcy — or at least coexistence with COVID-19. Those moves have jumped ahead of recommendations from the White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As for D.C.’s vaccine requirement — which drew widespread condemnation from Republicans on Capitol Hill, a number of whom introduced bills to overturn it — Bowser simply said that it had met the city’s stated goal of spurring more people to get the COVID-19 vaccine and was starting to show diminishing returns.

“We do believe that we’ve gotten the push out of the vaccine requirement for indoor venues that we’re going to get,” she said.

Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, the director of D.C. Health, said the initial imposition of restrictions as the omicron variant hit D.C. had produced a spike in the number of people getting vaccinated, but that she had seen that number level off since then. According to D.C. data, more than 90% of residents are now partially or fully vaccinated; just over 70% are fully vaccinated.

Still, Bowser’s move lift the month-old vaccine requirement is certain to draw criticisms that it’s premature. (Her decision to lift the indoor mask mandate in November was criticized, and reversed a month later.) One of those may have inadvertently comes from her own administration. During a hearing last week before the D.C. liquor board on the fate of The Big Board — an H Street bar that had its liquor license suspended after it refused to enforce the vaccine or mask mandates — an epidemiologist with D.C. Health argued that the city was not yet at the point where the mandates should be lifted.

“The mask and vaccine mandates are of crucial essence to continue with the trends we are seeing right now,” said Dr. Anil Mangla at the hearing.

In response to a question about those comments, Bowser simply said that Mangla was not speaking for her administration. She also declined to speak further on The Big Board, saying that “the process will still play itself out.”

In an interview with DCist/WAMU on Monday, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he thinks it’s too early to make any significant changes to the city’s mandates.

“I think we need to get below community spread, and I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” he said. “It looks like we’re still at almost 22 cases per 100,000 [residents] on a daily basis. We need to get a little bit lower, in my view, before we lift the mandate. Let’s be safe. Let’s get the number down to below 15.”

Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1) similarly said she disagreed with Bowser’s decision, though in more direct terms.

“As a [councilmember], and a parent of 2 kids under 5, I am flabbergasted and angry. Why would we give up on vaccines when we have come this far? Why are we not protecting the workers in these industries? Why are we telling parents we don’t care if they participate in society? I’m so F-ing mad,” she tweeted.

Robert White, the At-Large councilmember who is challenging Bowser in the mayoral race, similarly took to Twitter to express his disagreements with her decision.

“The vaccine mandate is working. Cases are just starting to go down and ending it now is premature. The vaccine mandate made it possible for many families, including mine, to feel a little comfort and calmed the anxiety of frontline workers and immunocompromised folks,” he wrote. “We need responsible leadership that centers the needs of our most vulnerable residents instead of trying to score political points.”

But as she has at different points during the pandemic, Bowser warned that these changes would not be the last — and more restrictions and requirements could come to pass in the future.

“What we know is we have to be nimble,” she said. “I don’t think any of us can say there won’t be other variants that require us to do something different.”