BOSTON (WHDH) - Students in Boston will still be required to wear masks in public schools even after the city lifts its indoor mask mandate for businesses and other venues on Saturday.
Mayor Michelle Wu said that officials are continuing to monitor COVID-19 data for schools following last week’s February break.
“The school buildings are a little bit tighter and we do have pretty big gaps in vaccinations,” she said.
Most cities in Massachusetts have dropped their mask requirement for schools.
Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician at Tufts Medical Center, said that she supports loosening mask rules in schools.
“Are we saying that we would continue to keep these mandates in place for weeks to months while the rest of society will have returned to complete normalcy and don’t those children deserve normalcy too?” she asked.
Doron noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is no longer using vaccination rates to determine whether mask mandates need to remain in place. This is because there is a high degree of immunity among the unvaccinated due to recent infection.
“That immunity may wane just as vaccine immunity does wane and we need to keep rethinking what we’re doing over time,” she said.
Beginning Saturday, residents and visitors to Boston will no longer be required to wear a face covering in indoor public spaces, such as gyms, bars and restaurants, museums, and entertainment venues. Individual businesses may still choose to require masking.
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