Students in Pittsburgh-area schools should be able to safely remove their masks nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, according to recommendations released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The updated guidance changes the look of the CDC’s risk map and puts more than 70% of the U.S. population — including all of southwestern Pennsylvania — in counties where the coronavirus is posing a low or medium threat to hospitals.
Those who still wear masks in those low- and medium-risk counties, such as many students and school staff members, can stop wearing masks, the agency said.
Some local school districts immediately took action on that advice, including the Hampton Township School District, which scheduled a special board meeting on Monday to make masking optional and update its requirements for isolation, quarantining and contact tracing.
“[T]his afternoon, the CDC has changed its masking guidelines to significantly reduce the circumstances under which the public would be advised to mask indoors,” Superintendent Michael Loughead said Friday in a letter to district families. “Under these new guidelines and based on current Allegheny County data, Allegheny County would no longer be subject to a recommendation of universal masking indoors. Taking all of the factors into consideration, and in consultation with the ACHD we believe it is appropriate to make a timely revision to our health and safety plan.”
The CDC still advises that people, including schoolchildren, wear masks where the risk of COVID-19 is high. That’s the situation in about 37% of U.S. counties, where about 28% of Americans reside.
The new recommendations do not change the requirement to wear masks on public transportation and indoors in airports, train stations and bus stations. The CDC guidelines for other indoor spaces aren’t binding, meaning cities and institutions even in areas of low risk may set their own rules. And the agency says people with COVID-19 symptoms or who test positive shouldn’t stop wearing masks.
But with protection from immunity rising — both from vaccination and infection — the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower, the CDC said.
“Anybody is certainly welcome to wear a mask at any time if they feel safer wearing a mask,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a news briefing. “We want to make sure our hospitals are OK, and people are not coming in with severe disease. ... Anyone can go to the CDC website, find out the volume of disease in their community and make that decision.”
Since July, CDC’s transmission-prevention guidance to communities has focused on two measures — the rate of new COVID-19 cases and the percentage of positive test results over the previous week.
Based on those measures, agency officials advised people to wear masks indoors in counties where spread of the virus was deemed substantial or high. This week, more than 3,000 of the nation’s more than 3,200 counties — greater than 95% — were listed as having substantial or high transmission.
That guidance has increasingly been ignored, however, with states, cities, counties and school districts across the U.S. announcing plans to drop mask mandates amid declining COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Many school systems in the Pittsburgh area were already mask-optional, and several more had changed or were in the process of moving away from universal mandates even before the CDC’s announcement.
The Bethel Park School District this year had made mask wearing dependent on COVID-19 transmission rates in Allegheny County.
But the school board decided earlier this week to switch to a mask-optional policy beginning Monday after the Allegheny County Health Department said it would stop releasing transmission data because it no longer accurately portrayed the situation in the community.
"With the county transmission data no longer available from the ACHD as of March 1, 2022, Bethel Park School District will instead monitor our local data as the measure of case counts and local spread," according to the district’s updated health and safety plan. "Should the case counts increase above 15% of enrollment in a building, mitigation strategies such as remote learning will be employed."
Bethel Park has seen a significant drop in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, going from more than 100 cases during a seven-day stretch a month ago to just three new cases reported in the past seven days.
The Baldwin-Whitehall School District — which had maintained a universal mask mandate throughout most of the year — moved to a mask-optional policy for students on Tuesday, according to a spokeswoman.
There are some instances where masks will be required in Baldwin-Whitehall, including at the high school's student-run coffee shop and at musical rehearsals, where an outbreak would jeopardize the production.
The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh announced last week that it would drop its mask mandate for its schools starting this coming Monday.
Several school systems that have universal indoor mask mandates said they had no immediate plans for change, including the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Clairton City Schools and Mt. Lebanon School District.
"We will work with our school board as the potential for new guidelines emerge and continue to follow the data and recommendations from our trusted health resources," said Kristen James, a spokeswoman for the Mt. Lebanon School District.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, released a statement praising the new guidance as a “safe off-ramp from universal masking.”
“The CDC’s guidance is informed by science, not politics, and sets us on a path to a new normal in schools and other public places,” Ms. Weingarten said. “By using an analysis of hospitalizations in addition to community transmission, school districts, in collaboration with educators, staff and families, can decide when to ease mask requirements — and we would urge everyone to apply it.”
State health officials are generally pleased with the new guidance and “excited with how this is being rolled out,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
“This is the way we need to go. I think this is taking us forward with a new direction going on in the pandemic,” Dr. Plescia said. “But we’re still focusing on safety. We’re still focusing on preventing death and illness.”
The CDC said the new system will be useful in predicting future surges and urged communities with wastewater surveillance systems to use that data too.
“If or when new variants emerge or the virus surges, we have more ways to protect ourselves and our communities than ever before,” Dr. Walensky said.
Andrew Goldstein: agoldstein@post-gazette.com. The Associated Press contributed.
First Published: February 25, 2022, 11:44 p.m.
Updated: February 27, 2022, 12:52 a.m.
