Walmart, Lowe’s, Aldi, Target among retailers adding face masks requirements due to COVID-19. See the full list.

The nation’s largest retailers are now requiring what some states and cities won’t: the use of face masks.

Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens and Kroger are the biggest to announce  mask mandates at stores nationwide joining the list of businesses with face covering requirements growing as COVID-19 cases rise. The coronavirus causes the disease COVID-19.

Dozens and dozens of states now require masks in public places, with Alabama, Arkansas and Colorado recently adding mandates. One state went in the opposite direction this week when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp suspended all local government mask orders on July 15.  

Individual businesses can choose to institute further restrictions, and the National Retail Federation is encouraging retailers to set nationwide mask policies to protect shoppers and employees.

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Retailers requiring masks isn’t new – especially in areas with local orders – but few businesses have embraced mandates before this month.

Shoppers have been required to wear masks to enter Costco and Apple stores across the nation since early May. Starbucks kicked off the new mask announcements last week and started requiring masks Wednesday, along with Best Buy and Panera Bread locations nationwide.

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A recent Harris Poll survey about businesses mandating masks found 76% of Americans want businesses to “exact and enforce” their own mandatory policies, with 80% saying they are more likely to do business with a company if they require all customers and employees to wear a face mask during the pandemic.

Marc Perrone, president of America’s largest food and retail union, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.3 million workers, said the companies’ actions are “not nearly enough to turn the tide as COVID-19.”

“Across the country, every governor and mayor must step up and make masks mandatory at all supermarkets and retail stores,” Perrone said in a statement. “Without universal mask mandates that are fully enforced nationwide, hundreds of thousands of Americans will continue to get sick and die. We cannot wait any longer.”

But while more retailers are starting to require masks at stores nationwide, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar reversed course and changed their policies. The retailers now “request” shoppers wear face coverings but still “require face coverings where required by state or local ordinance.”

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This week’s announcement starting rolling out a day after Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said if the American public were to embrace masking now the pandemic could be brought to heel in less than two months.

“If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really do think over the next 4-6-8 weeks, I really think we can bring this under control,” he said in an interview Tuesday with the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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What states require face masks in public?: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana join growing list of states where it’s mandatory.

These stores, businesses now require masks

Aldi: Started Monday, July 27.

Apple

Bed Bath & Beyond: Started Friday, July 24.

Best Buy

BJ’s Wholesale Club: Started Monday, July 20.

Circle K

Costco

CVS: Started Monday, July 20.

Home Depot: Started Wednesday, July 22.

Kohl’s: Started Monday, July 20.

H-E-B

Kroger:  Started Wednesday, July 22. (The grocer operates nearly 2,800 stores with several regional supermarket chains in 35 states, including Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Ralphs, Mariano’s, Fry’s, Smith’s, King Soopers, QFC and others.)

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