In a surprise announcement, California’s health officials announced Monday that school mask mandates would stay despite the removal by many other states.
California health officials announced during a Monday press conference that the state would not be making any changes to the mask mandate for K-12 schools. “Based on our data…it’s reasonable that we’re getting to a place where we can relax the statewide masking requirement. We will today not make a change. There will be no change on the masking requirement,” Secretary of California Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly said at the press conference. From here, state officials will go forward to evaluate the need for the school mask mandate based on factors that will include vaccination rates among children, hospital capacity and community case rates. Monday’s announcement came as California Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to announce his endemic strategy this week. In fact, many news outlets reported he would announce lifting the mask mandate on Monday. Other states, including Oregon, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, recently announced plans to end state-wide mask requirements in schools by the end of February or March, citing a decline in the Omicron-fueled surge of COVID cases. California’s indoor mask mandate is set to end Tuesday. “CA’s case rate has decreased by 65% since our Omicron peak. Our hospitalizations have stabilized across the state,” Newsom said in a tweet on February 8. “Our statewide indoor mask requirement will expire on 2/15.” Meanwhile, he said, “Unvaccinated people will still need to wear masks indoors.
