3/2/2022
Updated CDC Mask Guidance on tn Public Transportation
Last year on January 29, 2021, the CDC issued an Order that required face masks to be worn by all people while on public transportation (which included all passengers and all personnel operating conveyances) traveling into, within, or out of the United States and U.S. territories. The Order also required all people to wear masks while at transportation hubs (e.g., airports, bus or ferry terminals, train and subway stations, seaports, U.S. ports of entry, and other locations where people board public transportation in the United States and U.S. territories), including both indoor and outdoor areas.
Effective February 25, 2022, the CDC exercised its enforcement discretion to not require that people wear masks on buses or vans operated by public or private school systems, including early care and education/child care programs. The CDC is making this change to align with updated guidance that no longer recommends universal indoor mask wearing in K-12 schools and early education settings in areas with a low or medium COVID-19 Community Level. The CDC looks at the combination of three metrics — new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 population in the past 7 days, the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients, and total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days — to determine the new COVID-19 community level metric. School systems at their discretion may choose to require that people wear masks on buses or vans. Click Here to Read More
New CDC Mask Guidance Marks Major Shift for Schools
CDC rolled back coronavirus safety guidance for K-12 schools Friday, no longer recommending mask requirements for schools in communities with low to medium risk of COVID-19 spread and severity at the community level – a new metric that takes into consideration hospitalizations and local transmission. "At the high level, CDC recommends that everyone wear a mask indoors in public, including in schools," CDC Director Rochelle Walenksy said.
As it stands, 37% of counties in the U.S. fall under a high COVID-19 community level, representing 28% of the U.S. population, including large swaths of Arizona, California, Kentucky, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and West Virginia.
"We've been reviewing the data on COVID illness in children for over two years of a pandemic and we have seen that although children can get infected and can get sick with COVID, they're more likely to have asymptomatic or mild infections,” said Greta Massetti, a member of the COVID-19 Response Incident Management Team. “We know that when schools implement layered prevention strategies that they can prevent SARS cov transmission or transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19 in school. And we know that also because children are relatively at lower risk from severe illness that schools can be safe places for children.”
“So for that reason,” she said, “we're recommending that schools use the same guidance that we are recommending in general community settings.”
However, there is a lack of clarity about whether school buses fall under the federal masking mandate for public transportation, which the CDC’s updated guidance resolves by saying masks are not required on buses or vans operated by public or private schools.
Confusion over the issue was among the top concerns voiced during the school superintendents group’s national policy conference earlier this month, Ellerson Ng of the Association of School Superintendents said. Click Here to Read More
