Two weeks after Phil Murphy lifted the school mask mandate for all New Jersey students come September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have thrown a wrench in those plans.
The nation’s top health agency issued much-anticipated guidelines Friday calling for all unvaccinated teachers, staff and students to wear masks indoors and practice social distancing as schools return to full-time, in-person instruction.
Since a COVID vaccine for ages 5 to 11 isn’t expected to be approved until weeks or months after school begins, the CDC guidance calls for all elementary school-age children and some middle-school children to continue to wear masks.
Fully vaccinated students do not need to wear masks, the CDC says. Vaccines have only been approved for those 12 years and older.
So far Murphy is not saying how he’ll respond to the CDC’s announcement. Murphy said Friday that he hadn’t had yet reviewed the guidelines.
“We’ll get a chance to digest that report and come back to folks,” he told reporters when asked about it at an event in Seaside Heights.
Murphy’s stance on masks in schools has changed since late May when he said on MSNBC that students would have to wear masks in September because so many would be unvaccinated. Days later he said the mandate may not apply to older students because those 12 years and up can be vaccinated.
Then on June 28, he surprised many when he announced there would be no statewide mandate even for unvaccinated students but gave no clear reason why he was making a decision more than two months before schools were to reopen.
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Murphy is passing the decision-making onto superintendents and school boards in an election year, which may lead to intense local debate and fiery board meetings as the school year approaches.
While it’s rare for children to become sick when infected with coronavirus, they can act as asymptomatic vectors, transmitting the virus to others unknowingly. Transmission in New Jersey schools was rare last year due to a combination of mask-wearing, social distancing and students spending at least part of the week at home learning remotely, health officials say.
New Jersey will look much different in September with full classrooms and potentially maskless students from K to 12.
At the time of that announcement, Murphy said he anticipated the CDC would issue guidance on masks that he would “take it into consideration.”
But he also said it would take a “dramatic change” in the state’s COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths and other data to reinstate the mandate.
While those metrics have plummeted since April as millions of New Jersey residents became fully vaccinated, daily hospitalizations have hovered between 300 and 330 for three weeks. That has drawn concern from health officials, who say the highly contagious Delta variant is at least partially to blame.
More than 505,000 12- to 17-year-olds have been vaccinated as of Sunday, according to state data. About 55% of New Jersey’s 9.2 million residents are fully vaccinated.
Although some public officials were hoping a vaccine would be ready for young children around the start of school, it still appears to be months away.
Pfizer and Moderna are still conducting vaccine trials on youngsters. Pfizer executives said this month they expect to apply for emergency authorization for 5- to 11-year-olds in September or October.
States have taken different approaches as to how to handle masks in schools. Like New Jersey, Rhode Island officials said they would end a mask mandate next school year. But last week California officials said they would require everyone to wear masks regardless of vaccination status.
Lawmakers in some other states, including in Arizona, Iowa and Texas, have barred local school officials from requiring masks.
A few days before the CDC announcement last week, Murphy said it was not yet time to revisit the mask mandate. He has often said that changing mask policy can be done easily overnight.
“The good thing about a mask, it’s not like putting a new HVAC system,” he said “And you can make that call Sunday night for Monday morning.”
This article contains information from USA Today and the Associated Press.
Scott Fallon covers the environment for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news about how New Jersey’s environment affects your health and well-being, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: fallon@northjersey.com
Twitter: @newsfallon
