ELLSWORTH — As the volume of severe COVID-19 cases continues to decline (the number of patients hospitalized in Maine dipped to 319 Tuesday), a growing number of people are asking when mask-wearing will become optional in schools.
No specific plan or date were given, but Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Nirav Shah said Feb. 9 that he and his team are continuing discussions with local superintendents about how mitigation strategies against COVID-19, including masking, are working in schools.
Maine does not have a mask mandate in place statewide and has left that decision up to local school boards. However, the state Department of Education is adhering to the U.S. CDC’s guidelines for schools, which recommend universal indoor masking regardless of vaccination status.
Many recommendations set forth for schools by the Maine CDC and DOE, including those regarding quarantining, hinge on whether masking policies are in place. For example, the recent decision for schools to suspend the process of contact tracing is for institutions that have adopted their own mask mandates.
Shah is scheduled to meet with Maine superintendents Thursday with plans to discuss public health recommendations such as masking and pooled testing.
These conversations have been ongoing, Shah explained, and are what led the Maine CDC to end contact tracing within schools that have masking policies. That decision was made in part due to the realization that contact tracers couldn’t keep up with the speed of transmissibility of the Omicron variant.
“Now is the time for us to be having these conversations,” Shah said. He noted that aspects of the pandemic are improving but “COVID’s not over.”
States across the country, including Oregon, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Massachusetts, have made plans to lift their mask mandates and remand those decisions to local school districts.
The U.S. CDC continues to recommend mask-wearing in schools.
