As of Wednesday, March 2, New York State has lifted the indoor mask mandate for schools. This decision was based on an assessment conducted by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, including public health data of 100,000 people, hospital admission rates, vaccination rates, and more. Masks will still be required in healthcare settings and on public transportation. COVID cases have continued to decline since the winter surge peak in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGiven the decline in our rates, our hospitalizations, strong vaccination rates and the CDC guidance\u2026the day has come,\u201d Hochul said. \u201cToday we are going to be announcing that we\u2019ll be lifting the statewide mask requirement in schools, and that\u2019ll be effective this Wednesday, March 2,\u201d says Hochul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
COVID cases per 100,000 people have decreased by 50% since mid-January. Before break, over five million at-home tests were distributed to students to help limit breakouts upon their return to school. Hochul suggested that parents continue COVID testing of students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a tweet<\/a> made by Hochul, she states, \u201cOur top priority has always been keeping kids in school and making sure our classrooms are safe. Now, with COVID cases declining by 98% since the Omicron peak and updated <\/a>CDC guidance in place, we will lift the statewide school mask requirement this coming Wednesday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams states that the city is preparing to lift the mask mandate on March 7 if COVID cases remain low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A poll conducted by Siena College from February 14-17 found that 58% of New Yorkers wanted Hochul to wait until early March before deciding whether to lift the mandate. The other 42% believed that the masks should have been gone already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe will not stand for any bullying or ostracization or harassment of an individual or a business or anyone who chooses to wear a mask,\u201d Hochul comments. \u201cWe\u2019re going to continue distributing masks, we\u2019re going to continue distributing test kits. We\u2019re going to continue our aggressive vaccination strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As of Wednesday, March 2, New York State has lifted the indoor mask mandate for schools. This decision was based on an assessment conducted by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, including public health data of 100,000 people, hospital admission rates, vaccination rates, and more. Masks will still be required in healthcare settings and on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":17743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17744,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17742\/revisions\/17744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}