JULY 30, 2021.....Massachusetts public health officials on Friday began advising vaccinated people who live with any person at high-risk for COVID-19, who have weakened immune systems themselves and who are at an increased risk of severe COVID-19 because of their own age or health conditions to wear a mask or face covering when indoors and not in their own homes.
The shift in state suggestions comes as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the rise once again, this time propelled by the more contagious Delta variant, and on the heels of a new federal recommendation that even vaccinated people mask up in areas of significant coronavirus transmission.
Also Friday, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said it and the Department of Public Health "strongly recommend that all students in kindergarten through grade 6 wear masks when indoors, except students who cannot do so due to medical conditions or behavioral needs" and that "schools allow vaccinated students to remain unmasked."
"Massachusetts is moving forward in this new normal and we're moving forward safely," Gov. Charlie Baker said Friday in Roxbury, where he attended a youth vaccination event.
The updates from DPH and DESE came at the end of a week that saw the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reverse course and recommend that vaccinated people in areas of substantial or high COVID-19 transmission go back to wearing a mask indoors as the Delta variant surges across Massachusetts and the country. In Massachusetts, Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Nantucket and Suffolk counties fit that billing.
DPH said it was issuing its updated advisory Friday "in light of the information provided by the CDC, and in order to maximize protection of vulnerable individuals from the Delta variant."
On May 13, when the CDC said that fully vaccinated people could take off their masks, Massachusetts was averaging about 546 new cases of COVID-19 each day but the number was falling rapidly. By the end of June, the state was averaging just 64 daily new cases. On Friday, DPH reported 844 new cases and said the average stood at about 467 daily new cases.
When the mask advisory was issued from DPH late Friday morning, it stated that "the Department of Public Health now advises that a fully vaccinated person should wear a mask or face covering when indoors (and not in your own home) if you have a weakened immune system, or if you are at increased risk for severe disease because of your age or an underlying medical condition, or if someone in your household has a weakened immune system, is at increased risk for severe disease, or is unvaccinated."
That would have most affected parents of young kids since no one younger than 12 is even eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine and may not be for months. But during his press conference Friday, Baker said that the new advisory is not meant to apply to people who live with kids who are younger than 12 and therefore ineligible for a vaccine.
"OK, then that's your interpretation of our guidance. That's not the way it's written," Baker told a reporter who asked about the policy's application to parents. "What it's written to mean is that if you are with someone, you live with someone, who is vulnerable to COVID -- could be walks around carries a significant medical condition of their own that would make them vulnerable to COVID -- that those folks should be careful about that and wear a mask indoors if they believe that's the right thing to do."
About three hours after Baker's comments, DPH told the News Service that it updated its recommendation to clarify that it refers to unvaccinated adults only. The second DPH mask recommendation of the day suggests indoor mask use for any vaccinated person who has "an unvaccinated adult" in their household.
When school resumes in about a month, unvaccinated staffers, unvaccinated students in grades 7 and up, and unvaccinated visitors will be strongly encouraged to wear masks while indoors.
"We fully expect cities and towns to make adjustments to do what's right for their specific school districts. But one thing is clear: All schools and all districts must be open every day to every student, no matter what," Baker said Friday. "The documented negative impact on children that resulted from the uneven, unpredictable and profoundly difficult year that students had last year cannot and must not happen again. In-person learning is the only available option for Massachusetts schools and their students."
The DESE guidance stops short of mirroring the CDC, which said this week that indoor mask-wearing for teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools, regardless of vaccination status, is recommended.
School systems can make their own recommendations that go above and beyond the state's, and that's exactly what Massachusetts Teachers Association President Merrie Najimy called on school districts to do.
"As our schools reopen, DESE needs to be preparing for challenging conditions. It will be far easier to pull back restrictions if circumstances merit that step than to ramp them up should the coronavirus risk remain a substantial danger to families," she said. "The MTA strongly advocates for safe in-person learning. To ensure this can happen, we must employ the most stringent health and safety practices possible."
Sen. Becca Rausch, who has been leading a push to get Baker to mandate universal mask-wearing in schools this fall, said Baker "failed our Commonwealth's children and families" with the recommendations issued Friday.
"Kids, parents, teachers, and school committees have been through enough; they deserve better than weak, unenforceable, non-binding guidelines that further endanger their health and safety," she said.
American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts President Beth Kontos said Friday that the Baker administration needs to "require -- not just recommend -- universal mask wearing in K-6 schools this fall."
"If DESE continues to reject public health guidance and fails to act, local school committees need to step up and require universal mask wearing to keep us all safe and to maximize the likelihood of schools staying open this school year," she said.
What authority the governor has to require mask-wearing now that the state of emergency declaration that gave him broad powers throughout much of the pandemic has expired remains uncertain. Baker's face mask order lapsed May 29 and was replaced by an advisory from DPH.
"I guess what I would say in answer to that question is, you know, talk to the lawyers," Baker said Friday afternoon when asked if guidance is as far as he is legally able to go without a state of emergency. "There's a lot of debate and discussion about that."
He also said Friday that he is not considering declaring another state of emergency around the coronavirus.
Baker said Friday in Roxbury that the new state advisory was issued "to reflect the new information out of the CDC" but added that the policy is not simply copied from the CDC but instead is "tailored" specifically to Massachusetts.
"We've made significant progress in the COVID fight. We lead the nation in vaccination rates among big states, and as a result, we have one of the lowest hospitalization rates in the country," he said, echoing a point he has made previously about Massachusetts being "in a much better position than the vast majority of the states in this country" with respect to the latest wave of COVID-19.
However, the CDC said Friday that its recommendation was based in part on the findings of an investigation into the outbreak of about 900 COVID-19 cases among people in Provincetown, many of them vaccinated. The CDC said that investigation "raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus."
"This finding is concerning and was a pivotal discovery leading to CDC's updated mask recommendation," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. "The masking recommendation was updated to ensure the vaccinated public would not unknowingly transmit virus to others, including their unvaccinated or immunocompromised loved ones."
The governor made clear that he is not a fan of the CDC's latest guidance, which recommends different levels of protection based on the current transmission levels in a given county.
"What if you work in one county and live in another? What if you decided to go to vacation or out to dinner in one county and live in another?" he said in explaining why he opted for a statewide advisory. "And by the way, how is anybody supposed to keep track, given all the stuff that's going on in their daily life, with a rolling seven-day average in which one of four elements is going to determine, based on whichever one is highest, whether or not a district is substantially at risk or significantly at risk?"
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07/30/2021