New York lifts indoor mask mandate starting Thursday but rule will remain in place in schools

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New York officially dropped its indoor mask mandate beginning Thursday as coronavirus cases continue to ‘decline on many fronts’ in New York and across the nation. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul let the mandate, which was slated to expire Wednesday, lapse as the state reported a 93 percent drop in cases. The seven-day average positivity rate is declining, as well. 

Hochul said ‘it is the right time to lift this mandate’ and let businesses and local leaders decide what is best for their communities. 

The mask mandate will remain in effect at state-regulated facilities including schools, health care facilities, adult care facilities and nursing homes, correctional facilities, childcare centers, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and on public transit. All other businesses are no longer ordered to require masks but can do so if they choose. 

The governor said she will review the school order next month after students return to the classroom after their upcoming midwinter break.

‘I spoke with teachers, superintendents and parent representatives yesterday about keeping schools safe and open, she said. ‘We’re getting tests out so kids can come back safely from Midwinter break, and I expect to make an assessment on masks based on the data in early March.’

Neighboring Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey also announced plans to lift mask mandates for schools and other public places this week in an effort to return to ‘normalcy.’ 

Hochul’s ruling does not impact the vaccination requirement for indoor public activities currently in effect in New York City. The city ordinance requires businesses, dining facilities, fitness centers, indoor entertainment and certain meeting spaces to to check the vaccination status of all staff and customers five and older. Unvaccinated individuals are to be denied entry into the establishment.

Hochul’s decision comes as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared it continues to stand by its mask-wearing guidelines for schools, saying COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are still ‘too high’ to consider dropping restrictions despite daily infections having declined by 47 percent over the past seven days.

‘Right now our CDC guidance has not changed. We continue to endorse universal masking in schools,’ CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a radio interview with WYPR on Tuesday. ‘We owe it to our children to make sure that they can safely stay in school. Right now, that includes masking. We’ve seen outbreaks that have occurred in communities where students were not masked in schools and had to close.’ 

Dr. Anthony Fauci – chief medical adviser for President Joe Biden – had said Tuesday that America is almost past the ‘full-blown’ pandemic phase and he hoped there would be an ending to all COVID-related restrictions in the coming months, including the mandatory use of face masks.   

New York’s masking rule was put in place in December as the Omicron variant began to soar and carried a maximum of a $1,000 fine for each violation.

The highly-debated mandate required businesses to ask customers for proof of full vaccination or require mask-wearing indoors at all times. It applied to all patrons two years or older.

If a business opted for the vaccine requirement, employees and patrons had to be 14 days removed from the final shot of a COVID-19 vaccine sequence – either the second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the first shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Children not old enough to get the shot were required to mask. 

The mandate was initially set to expire weeks ago, but had been extended twice while state officials waited for the wave to subside.

Hochul argued Wednesday that New York is ‘trending in a very, very good direction’ – citing case and hospitalization rates – and is ‘now approaching a new phase in this pandemic.’ 

‘We are not where we were in early December. New Yorkers did the right thing to get through the winter surge, and we can now lift the statewide mask-or-vaccine requirement for indoor businesses starting tomorrow,’ she said, adding: ‘Counties, cities and businesses can still choose to require masks.’  

New York reported just over 6,000 new positive coronavirus cases on Tuesday, a 93 percent decline from the 90,000 that tested positive about a month ago.

The statewide positivity rate is now 3.67 percent, a decline from the 23.2 percent peak recorded at the start of 2022.

Additionally, hospitalizations had decreased to 4,600, a 63 percent drop from the 12,000 reported in mid-January.  

Cases are coming down virtually everywhere in America. Daily cases have dropped 47 percent nationwide over the past week, from 453,141 cases per day last week to 239,757 now. Deaths caused by the virus, a lagging indicator that trends a few weeks behind cases, have flattened as well with 2,480 being recorded daily.

Only one state, Maine, is recording an increase in cases over the past two weeks, and more than 30 states have seen cases slash in half during that period.  

‘Masks have been a successful part of our toolkit to fight COVID, and New Yorkers must keep wearing them in certain places throughout the state,’ Hochul argued. during Wednesday’s press conference.

The governor said she will revisit the school mask mandate come March, but said in the meantime officials are taking steps to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 ahead of midwinter break. 

All K-12 students and their families will be provided a state issued ‘winter tool kit’ that involves sending children home with COVID testing kits ahead of the school recess. They will then be tested again upon return from break.

Hochul said officials will use this data to make further decisions about masking in classrooms. 

Earlier this week, Hochul states she would like to see vaccination rates for children improve before she does away with that statewide school mask mandate, which has been in place since August. 

She reiterated that claim Wednesday, calling on parents to get their children vaccinated. She also asked pediatricians and family medical experts to encourage their patients to get the jabs.  

Hochul also met with school board members, superintendents and parent-teacher associations from across the state on Tuesday to hear their pandemic-related concerns firsthand.  

She claims most of the attendees said majority of complaints came from parents frustrated over the lack of clarity around the metrics used to keep the school mask mandate in place.   

The wave of blue states have started to drop their mask mandates while President Joe Biden and the White House are facing more pressure to look towards getting back to normal. 

Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at her briefing on Tuesday that it was important for states to let school districts decide classroom rules and hoped leaders continued to look at the ‘science and data’. 

When asked for a timeline regarding new mask guidance, Psaki deflected to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

‘You’ll have to ask the CDC,’ she said. ‘The CDC moves at the pace of data and science.’

Despite declines in infections from recent record highs, CDC director Walensky claimed the nation is currently seeing higher hospitalization rates than it did during the peak of cases caused by the Delta variant in 2021. 

‘Right now, we still have about 290,000 cases every single day, and our hospitalization rates now are higher than they even were at the peak of our Delta surge,’ Walensky said. 

‘So in this moment – while we are looking ahead and planning ahead, and we’ll continue to evaluate and follow the science – our recommendations are consistent with encouraging students to wear well-fitting masks.’ 

The doctor added that hospital capacity is ‘one of the most important barometers’ for determining whether the U.S. should lift measures and transition from a pandemic phase into an endemic phase, although she did not give a specific number of cases that she believes to be a benchmark for changing the guidance. 

‘I don’t necessarily look at a magic number. What I do think is a really important barometer is how our hospitals are doing,’ Walensky explained.

‘Are hospitals able to, you know, take care of the car accidents, the heart attacks and strokes that routinely walk in the door because they are not at capacity taking care of patients with COVID-19? 

‘And right now across the country, our hospitals are still in crunch mode,’ she said. ‘They still have real challenges with capacity.’ 

Meanwhile, Fauci said the government’s response to COVID-19 will eventually be handled on a local level rather than a federal one, in his most optimistic comments about the trajectory of the pandemic since the emergence of Omicron.

He told the Financial Times Tuesday: ‘I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the COVID restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.’  

Asked when restrictions might end, he agreed with the suggestion that it could be this year and said he hoped it would be ‘soon,’ but he failed to give an exact date. 

Despite his optimism, Fauci did warn that local health departments could reintroduce measures temporarily to control outbreaks within the community.

The immunologist said although the virus will not be ‘eradicated,’ he believed it could reach an ‘equilibrium’ when enough people are vaccinated or protected from past COVID infection, meaning the government could end pandemic-related restrictions.

Fauci also predicted that not everybody would need regular vaccine boosters to protect themselves from COVID, saying young and healthy people with ‘no underlying conditions’ might only need a booster ‘every four or five years’.