School Mask Mandate To End In CT: Here's What To Know

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont said the state will not extend the state's school mask mandate past Feb. 28.

The decision to require students to wear a mask will then be up to individual school districts and daycare centers.

Lamont said he, in association with the state legislature, under advisement from the state Department of Health and Department of Education, reserves the right to reinstate the mandate should the virus metrics get worse, but did not believe that likely.

The plan is contingent upon the legislature voting to extend the governor’s existing executive order that enables the public health commissioner with the ability of implementing mask requirements in certain settings.

Schools will receive updated guidance from the Connecticut Department of Health, but there will not be "one firm metric," according to DPH Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani.

Lamont's change of heart came the same day as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced he would drop his state's mandate on March 7. The two northeastern state leaders have frequently been in sync in both their enactment and relaxation of COVID-19 protocols throughout the pandemic.

"I think this is something we've earned" Lamont said, during a news conference Monday afternoon.

In many Connecticut towns, public sentiment for school mask mandates, never warm and fuzzy, has downright chilled. Anti-school mask parent groups have proliferated, and grown, online following the peak in COVID-19 infections after the first of the year. Anti-school mask rallies have become more numerous.

A group of pediatricians argued that mask mandates and other COVID-19 safety protocols in schools may not behoove students in a report called Children, COVID, and the Urgency of Normal released Jan. 27. Researchers have also pointed out that the cloth masks worn most commonly by school children are ineffectual against the coronavirus omicron variant.

But not everyone is on board, most notably the school unions. Labor leaders representing nearly 60,000 teachers, paraeducators, school nurses, custodians, food service and other public education professionals have called upon state officials to keep the school mask mandate in place.

"We have remained among the safest states throughout this pandemic because elected leaders have heeded the call to 'follow the science,'" said American Federation of Teachers Connecticut President Jan Hochadel in a statement released last week. "There is no sound reason to veer off course now and put the health and safety of our members and their students at greater risk."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also favors mandating masks in schools. In its latest guidance, the CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students ages 2 years and older, staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.

While the push to end mask mandates in Connecticut schools has been energized in recent weeks, the enthusiasm is not the same nationwide. A New York Times poll taken last month found 68 percent of Americans backed requiring student masking to control the omicron variant's spread.

The school mask mandate has been powered by the governor's COVID-19 pandemic executive orders, which are set to expire Feb. 15. Once those pandemic emergency orders lapse, the fate of masks in schools would be in the hands of the state legislature.

In September, the Connecticut General Assembly approved an extension of Lamont's powers for the sixth time. Lawmakers are not expected to do so again. The executive order mandating school masks was one of 11 which Lamont had requested CGA extend once its new session begins on Wednesday.

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Although the daily COVID-19 infection rate and other pandemic indices have been declining steadily since the middle of last month, most key metrics remain higher than they were at the start of the 2021-23 school year.

The state's daily positivity rate on Sept. 3 was 2.73 percent, and 4.77 percent over the weekend, according to the data released by the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

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The daily coronavirus positivity rate is a function of the number of tests compared to the number of cases confirmed positive each day. Over the weekend, 2,138 positive cases were logged, out of 44,789 tests taken. The numbers of tests and cases confirmed do not include those taken with at-home self-test kits.

The number of residents in the hospital with COVID-19 is now 631, or 266 more beds since the start of the school year. The metric has also enjoyed the steepest decline, 1,308 beds since Jan. 12. Many of those in hospitals with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and were not admitted because of the virus.

According to data released Monday, about 49 percent of those hospitalized in Connecticut with COVID-19, or 308 patients, are fully vaccinated.

The number of COVID-19 cases among Connecticut PK-12 staff and students has also been declining steadily since mid-January, but is still higher than the beginning of September by a factor of 10.

On Wednesday, the Department of Public Health reported 3,904 total infections for students, down from nearly 6,800 last week. DPH logged 695 positive COVID-19 cases among school staff, down from 1,267 the previous week.

Cases among staff and students had remained relatively low until the first week of November, when they began their climb. Confirmed cases among both groups shot up dramatically after the first of the year.

Currently, the highest number of the hospitalized —207 — are in Hartford County.

Instructions on how to get COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters in Connecticut are available online, as is a list of walk-up clinics sponsored by DPH.

With reporting from Josh Bakan/New Jersey Patch Staff.