Washington, D.C. public schools will continue to impose an indoor mask mandate for all students, staff, and visitors in defiance of updated CDC guidance relaxing masking recommendation for regions with low virus transmission, such as D.C.
“Students, staff and visitors will no longer be required to wear a mask when outdoors at our schools, effective immediately. Masks will continue to be required for all students, staff, and visitors while indoors,” a March 1 notice from DCPS reads.
The latest CDC advisory says that most U.S. counties do not qualify as “at-risk” areas for Covid-19 concentration and therefore can drop their mask requirements. The CDC introduced a new tool, the “Covid-19 community level,” to rate counties in America based on occupied hospital beds, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area. Distinguishing between areas of “low,” “medium,” and “high” Covid-19 transmission, mask-wearing is only encouraged for the last category.
“This new framework moves beyond just looking at cases and test positivity, to evaluate factors that reflect the severity of disease — including hospitalizations and hospital capacity — and helps to determine whether the level of Covid-19 and severe disease are low, medium or high in a community,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters Friday.
According to the CDC map showing a color-coded breakdown of Covid-19 levels in the country, Washington, D.C., as well as most of Maryland to its north, falls into the “low” transmission category. The White House and Congress have dropped their mask mandates in accordance with the updated guidance.
DCPS’ decision to maintain the mask requirement for school children comes after multiple Democratic-dominated states and progressive localities that had strict pandemic mitigation regimes, from New Jersey and New York to Boston and Chicago, have dropped their mask rules to reflect waning Omicron transmission and decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. The scientific community is also starting to accept the growing evidence that masks, especially the cloth variety most common in schools, are ineffective against Covid-19.
Masking children for hours daily has caused many kids to struggle with learning loss and stagnate in terms of social development, a growing body of science suggests.
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