Philly Public, Catholic Schools Lift Mask Mandate

Philadelphia PA

09 March, 2022

9:42 AM

Description

PHILADELPHIA — Masks are no longer required in the School District of Philadelphia and parochial schools in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Health Department announced the indoor school mask mandate has been dropped. Additionally, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia lifted its mask mandate for all its schools in Philadelphia. The Archdiocese previously lifted mask mandates for suburban schools. Masks are now optional in public and archdiocesan schools in the city. This policy applies to all early childhood education settings, pre-K, kindergarten through 12th grade schools, after-school programs, and school camps. Head Start programs are not covered and are still required to enforce universal masking for all staff and children two and older under existing Federal Rule. The covered school settings will continue to be mask optional until/unless the City moves to the Mask Precautions COVID Response Level. As mask mandate will be in place for a week after spring break, health officials said. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia said all other COVID-19 protocols — such as social distancing, increased ventilation, and enhanced cleaning — will remain in place. "We will continue to monitor and report COVID-19 cases and if there are case surges within a school building or a county there may be a need to return to the use of masks," the Archdiocese said. "The further reduction of other mitigation efforts will be considering over time pending circumstances. We continue, in the strongest possible terms, to encourage all students and staff to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine and booster." The Health Department also announced an update to the COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard. The dashboard now includes detailed information on 5- to 11-year-old vaccination rates, boosters for Philadelphians 12 and older, and updates to some percentages due to data cleaning. It also incorporates changes due to the correction of errors made during the incorporation of data from the state that were discovered during a routine review. The city's COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard will be updated Wednesday so that information on pediatric vaccines and boosters for Philadelphians 12 and older will be included. The update will include correction of vaccination percentages which particularly impacts the numbers for 5- to 11 year-olds. "We were excited to see a high percentage of Philadelphia youth vaccinated, but we have learned that there was an error in how that percentage was calculated," said Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole. "No one is more disappointed than we are at this error, but we have corrected it and instituted new measures to ensure that any future problems are caught before they go live. I am happy to see that our pediatric vaccine rate is still higher than the nation's but this shows us that we still have a great deal of work to do to vaccinate all of our children."