Ingham County just dropped mask mandates in schools — and others may soon follow
For the first time in months, pandemic trends appear to be headed in the right direction, and many are asking: Is it time to lift COVID-19 mask mandates?
In Ingham County, at least, the answer is yes, said Health Officer Linda Vail, who announced Thursday she would drop the county's K-12 school mask requirements as of midnight Feb. 19.
“We are at a point in this pandemic in which public health strategies will begin to shift more toward personal responsibility as we learn to live with COVID-19 long-term,” she said in a statement. “As a public health agency, we will continue to support local school districts by recommending evidence-based public health measures, educating on current guidance and practices, and making recommendations for staying safe and healthy.”
Although there isn't a statewide mask requirement in Michigan, Vail was among several local health department leaders who issued public health orders in the fall of 2021, requiring face masks for all students and staff inside K-12 schools in their counties. Some school districts enacted their own mask rules, too.
The Ingham County mandate initially said it would remain in effect until metrics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show community transmission rates have fallen to "moderate" levels or lower for at least 14 consecutive days — or until Vail rescinds it.
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The CDC set up a tiered system to measure the level of spread of the virus in each county in the U.S. It uses the case rate and the test positivity rate to determine whether transmission in each county is low, moderate, substantial or high.
Coronavirus transmission in all 83 Michigan counties and vast majority of the country remains high per CDC thresholds, which means that more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people have been diagnosed in the last week, and the percentage of positive tests remains above 10%.
But Vail pulled back on the Ingham County school mask mandate Thursday as coronavirus case rates plummet in Michigan. Hospitalizations from the virus are falling fast, too. The percentage of positive tests in the state dropped to 10.8% on Tuesday — the lowest single-day level since October.
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She's not alone.
Lisa Peacock, the health officer for both the Health Department of Northwest Michigan, which covers Antrim, Charlevoix, Emmet and Otsego counties, and the Benzie-Leelanau Health Department, said she's also weighing the possibility of dropping school mask requirements in all six counties she serves.
"We are looking at the circumstances that we need to remove the mask mandates," Peacock said. "Certainly, when you already have a mandate in place and you're in the middle of a surge and our hospital systems are very fragile, that has been a situation where it hasn't been appropriate or safe to remove a protective measure.
"However, as we see those circumstances changing, we are definitely talking about that. The mask mandate was always intended to be temporary. It was always intended to be utilized when we have epidemic conditions that require that safety measure to be in place."
She said she'd like to see COVID-19 hospitalization rates continue to drop along with deaths from the virus before deciding to drop masks in schools.
"We are probably a week out from being comfortable," Peacock said, adding that she's "taking this week just to kind of watch and see what happens with data."
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School district leaders in northwestern Michigan have asked the health departments to give them at least a week of advance notice of any policy change regarding masks, she said, "so that they can begin to prepare their staff and families and boards and make their policy changes that need to be made related to the mask mandate."
Now that school-age children are eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, it makes the decision a little easier, Peacock said.
"Parents have had an ample opportunity for their children to get vaccinated," she said.
"Because of all those things, we really are at a point where we're looking at that in the very near future; I imagine by the end of the week we'll know ... what direction we're taking, and hopefully we'll be able to make an announcement that we'll be lifting it about a week later."
Washtenaw, Wayne and Oakland county health departments all have public health orders in place requiring masks in K-12 schools, too, with language that says the mandates are to remain in effect until CDC transmission levels fall to the moderate level or lower for 14 consecutive days — or until the health officer rescinds them.
"Our school mask mandate is currently set to stay in place while transmission remains high or substantial according to CDC," said Susan Ringler Cerniglia, a spokesperson for the Washtenaw County Health Department. "We are reviewing that now and hope we'll have a(n) update by Friday."
Still too soon?
The state health department says it may still be too soon to consider shedding masks in schools.
"Although case rates and percent positivity have begun to decline in Michigan, we are still at what we consider to be a high plateau and we continue to monitor these metrics closely as they pertain to the use of mitigation strategies such as masks," said Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
"According to recent school outbreak data, nearly 700 cases were reported as part of new school outbreaks this past week. To help protect students, staff and communities, we continue to recommend universal masking in schools and wearing masks in indoor public settings to help slow the spread of COVID-19."
A total of 173 school districts still have mask mandates in Michigan, covering about 683,356 students, or 54.47% in the state, Sutfin said Thursday.
Those numbers have been shrinking for months and are now about 31% lower than they were in late September, when 251 school districts in Michigan had mask rules in place, covering 787,657 students, according to state health department data.
Several county health department leaders withdrew K-12 mask mandates because of language state lawmakers wrote into the 2022 fiscal year budget bill.
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The budget, which took effect Oct. 1, included boilerplate language that threatened to cut funding to any local health department that issued mask mandates or COVID-19 quarantine rules for K-12 schools.
Even though Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said the language was unenforceable, the threat of lawsuits was too risky for some local health departments.
Lawsuits aim to stop school masking rules
Parents opposed to the mandates have taken some local health departments and school districts to court over the issue.
Lawsuits were filed Monday in Oakland County Circuit Court against three school districts and the Oakland County Health Division over the countywide school mask mandate.
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Parents in the Huron Valley Schools, Troy School District and Waterford School District are suing to repeal the mask requirement issued by county health officer Leigh-Ann Stafford.
Bill Mullan, a spokesperson for Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter, told the Free Press he could not comment on pending litigation, and did not say whether the health division was considering removing the countywide school mask mandate.
In Walled Lake Consolidated Schools, parents are threatening to sue if the district doesn't stop enforcing the county mask requirement.
“Over the past several months, Walled Lake Citizens for Parental Rights have made numerous efforts to convince the Walled Lake Consolidated School District to stop their misuse of taxpayer funds in enforcing a mask mandate,” Nathan Pawl, the group’s spokesperson, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the district has not listened to the voices of parents or students.”
The parent group submitted a letter late last week to the Walled Lake school board, demanding that the district stop requiring students to wear masks or a lawsuit would follow within seven days.
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In Macomb County, a hearing is set for Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by an 11-year-old middle schooler and his father against Chippewa Valley School District and its superintendent, Ronald Roberts.
Roberts instituted a temporary school mask requirement last month amid rising COVID-19 cases. Lucas Simon, a sixth grader at Seneca Middle School and his father, Adam Simon, sued in Macomb County Circuit Court soon after.
The lawsuit alleges Roberts notified parents via email that the district would require students to wear a mask while attending school and that school policy allowed the mandate. The Simons allege the district is “forcing school age children to wear medical devices on their faces.”
Court documents say Lucas has a congenital medical condition called bronchomalacia and that wearing a mask compounds his condition while further restricting breathing. The boy's doctors could not or would not write a prescription for a medical exemption, according to the lawsuit.
Lucas was sent home twice from school last month for noncompliance with the mask mandate, which was in effect Jan. 12-Feb. 4, and required students to wear masks on buses, in school and while attending school-related sports and activities.
Roberts said in the letter to parents that in the week prior to Jan. 12, the district had more than 80 new cases affecting students and staff, and that on Jan. 11, eight bus drivers were out because of the virus and 60 positive cases were reported in its secondary schools.
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The district didn’t have a virtual learning option for Lucas, the lawsuit says.
Despite the resistance some districts have faced around mask requirements, the Detroit Public Schools Community District will continue to require masks in all of its buildings, said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.
“We look forward to the day staff and students do not need to wear a mask in school," Vitti, who runs the state's largest school district, said Thursday in a statement to the Free Press. "We are optimistic that this day is approaching soon.
"DPSCD has always been in alignment with CDC, Michigan health department, and the Detroit Health Department health guidelines regarding COVID. Currently, all three health organizations recommend universal masking indoors for K-12 settings. When this recommendation changes, then we will consider updating this requirement.”
Other states shed masks
Nationally, mask requirements are a hot issue, too. They're dropping off even in states that have had some of the most stringent pandemic restrictions to date.
The governors of New Jersey and Connecticut have announced they're dropping statewide K-12 school mask rules.
In New York state, the mask mandate for most indoor settings expires Thursday, but students and staff in K-12 schools will still have to wear them. In Illinois, the mandate ends Feb. 28 for most indoor places, but schools are an exception.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the nation is still divided over the mask issue.
"We understand where the emotions of the country are," Psaki said in a news conference Wednesday. "People are tired of masks. ... If you look at the polling though, there's also a huge chunk of people who still want masks.
"There are some states that are moving toward rolling back or giving more choice to local communities about how they will implement these requirements.
"From the federal government, what our responsibility to do is to ... listen to scientists, listen to data. That doesn't move at the speed of politics; it moves at the speed of data."
She said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and other national health leaders are evaluating federal K-12 school mask guidelines.
"So we certainly understand the need and desire to be flexible, and we want to ensure the public health guidance that we're providing meets the moment that we're in," Walensky said during a Wednesday news media briefing.
Decisions about mask requirements should be made at the local level, Walensky said, using local transmission data, and must take into consideration people who are immunocompromised and disabled and more vulnerable to the virus.
"At this time, we continue to recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission — that's much of the country right now — in public indoor settings," she said. "And so we're, of course, taking a close look at this in real time, and we're evaluating rates of transmission as well as rates of severe outcomes as we look at updating and reviewing our guidance."
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Though Walensky said the trends are encouraging, "our hospitalizations are still high, our death rates are still high. ... We are encouraged by the current trends, (but) we are not there yet."
Still, Ingham County's Vail said the public health emergency brought on by the coronavirus can't last forever.
"Public health has got a role," Vail said. "We had an emergency. We had to figure out this virus. Many things needed to be done early on because we didn't know how fatal it was going to be. There were any number of things that we didn't know.
"The more we know, the more that we can basically go back to the public health mode of" recommending and educating, "rather than restricting and ordering, which is not something you do for indefinite periods of time; that's an emergency situation."
While the omicron variant pushed case rates and hospitalizations to record highs in Michigan, Vail said: "At some point, we have to admit that we're not in an emergency."
Free Press staff writer Christina Hall contributed to this report.
Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: COVID-19 mask mandates in Michigan schools: Benchmark could signal end
