COVID-19 Update: States, local governments consider drawdown of mask mandates

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and across the coun­try are work­ing to mitigate.

United States

Both Pres­i­dent Biden and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) have been cau­tious to con­sid­er rec­om­mend­ing any relax­ation or con­clu­sion to rec­om­men­da­tions to use masks, but a num­ber of states with strict mea­sures will be relax­ing their rules. For exam­ple, New York will be lift­ing its mask man­date on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 10th, Cal­i­for­nia has announced that it will allow to expire its indoor mask man­date as of Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 15th, and Illi­nois will be lift­ing its indoor mask man­date on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 28th.

Oth­er states have or will be imple­ment­ing sim­i­lar mea­sures, but most efforts are spe­cif­ic in scope and allow for coun­ty and local author­i­ties with­in their states to main­tain their own exist­ing man­dates if they so wish.

In most cas­es, schools will not yet be effect­ed, but come between the last week in Feb­ru­ary and the mid­dle of March, they may be next allowed to have mask require­ments fall or become option­al in one form or another.

Whether this is a rea­son­able response to the omi­cron out­break’s progress remains to be seen, but here is a rea­son­able place to assess and prepare.

Wash­ing­ton

On Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 9th, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee announced that a lift­ing of the statewide out­door mask man­date may take place start­ing Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 18th, if the present decline in the rate at which the num­ber of omi­cron cas­es occur con­tin­ues its sig­nif­i­cant descent.

Remov­ing the indoor mask man­date could be con­sid­ered, if the out­door mask man­date is lift­ed, as ear­ly as Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 25th.

This fol­lows Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Schools Instruc­tion Chris Reyk­dal declar­ing in an inter­view on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 7th, that he would be rec­om­mend­ing to the Gov­er­nor that masks be made option­al in schools as the recent boom in coro­n­avirus cas­es starts to sub­side across Wash­ing­ton State.

Reyk­dal also stat­ed that his office would mon­i­tor cas­es and rec­om­mend re-impo­si­tion of indoor mask man­dates if a new vari­ant of post-omi­cron COVID-19 would lead to a sharp rise in cases.

Reyk­dal clar­i­fied his com­ments through an offi­cial state­ment imme­di­ate­ly after Gov­er­nor Inslee’s press con­fer­ence on the 9th.

“As part of my rec­om­men­da­tion to the Depart­ment of Health and the Gov­er­nor, I expect schools will con­tin­ue to have rapid tests on-site to quick­ly assess symp­to­matic stu­dents, staff, and close con­tacts. Those who test pos­i­tive will con­tin­ue to iso­late and quar­an­tine until their symp­toms subside.

Cur­rent laws empow­er local health offi­cials to assess health and safe­ty risks and deter­mine local strate­gies. Giv­en the var­ied vac­ci­na­tion rates and adher­ence to oth­er mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies across the regions in our state, it is time to return deci­sion-mak­ing to local health offi­cials. In some cas­es, local health offi­cials may require tem­po­rary returns to mask­ing or oth­er mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies if cas­es spike or if a new vari­ant pos­es ele­vat­ed risks.”

Oregon

On Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 7th, the Ore­gon Health Author­i­ty announced that it would like­ly lift its indoor mask man­date, includ­ing for schools, as of Thurs­day, March 31st. This like­ly in part due a near one third decrease in cas­es since the state hit its peak just over a week ago.

Idaho

Due to a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of rules regard­ing fed­er­al funds allo­ca­tion for rent relief for those most at risk of evic­tion, Ida­ho has lost access to $22 mil­lion in funds, pri­mar­i­ly with­in the greater Boise area.

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Karey Han­ks is spon­sor­ing a bill, House Bill 514, that would pro­hib­it cities, coun­ties, health dis­tricts and local school boards from requir­ing face masks or sim­i­lar cov­er­ing, would pre­vent any offi­cer of the state from requir­ing masks, and any vio­la­tion of the pro­hi­bi­tion would result in ter­mi­nat­ing any relat­ed emer­gency order or pub­lic health order in place.

British Colum­bia

BC Provin­cial Health will be expand­ing its vac­ci­na­tion man­date to all health prac­ti­tion­ers reg­u­lat­ed by the province’s B.C.‘s health-care med­ical schools, includ­ing den­tists and chi­ro­prac­tors, as of Thurs­day, March 24th.

The anti-vac­cine man­date protests in Ottawa have spread to Van­cou­ver, Vic­to­ria and Sur­rey, but so far their impact has not been sig­nif­i­cant. There were enough con­cerns, how­ev­er, for health­care work­ers in Van­cou­ver to be told, for their safe­ty, to not wear their scrubs or job cre­den­tials imme­di­ate­ly out­side their places of employ­ment just before the protests in Van­cou­ver began.

The hard, cold numbers (plus vaccinations)

Wash­ing­ton has had 1,382,889 cas­es and 11,139 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the forty-sixth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the forty-sev­enth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

10,968,200 tests have been recorded.

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the state: 13,915,795
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 11,268,717 (80.98%)

Ore­gon has had 665,486 cas­es and 6,265 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the fifti­eth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the forty-fifth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

10,077,174 tests have been recorded.

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the state: 7,953,005
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 6,193,364 (77.87%)

Ida­ho has had 395,366 cas­es and 4,497 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the thir­ty-eighth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the thir­ty-fourth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

2,707,996 tests have been recorded.

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the state: 2,741,310
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 1,881,077 (68.62%)

British Colum­bia has had 231,171 cas­es and 2,409 attrib­ut­able deaths.

4,940,761 tests have been recorded.

British Colum­bia has the eighth worst infec­tion rate and the sixth worst death rate among the thir­teen Cana­di­an provinces and ter­ri­to­ries per hun­dred thou­sand pop­u­la­tion. (If it were an Amer­i­can state, it would be fifty-third and fifty-third, respec­tive­ly, out of fifty-three.)

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the province: 12,097,098
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 10,993,912 (90.88%)

That does it for this install­ment of COVID-19 Update. Stay safe and well!