New York City schools will soon no longer require children between the ages of 2 and 4-years-old to wear masks.
Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday that beginning Monday, 4 April, masking for children between the ages of 2 and 4 will be optional.
Mr Adams said that masking would remain optional so long as Covid-19 case numbers remain low.
"It’s now been two weeks since we removed the mask mandate for K-12 public school children, and our percent positivity in schools has, thankfully, remained low," he said. "Each day, we review the data, and if we continue to see low levels of risk, then, on Monday, April 4, we will make masks optional for 2-4 year old children in schools and daycare settings."
The move comes after New York Governor Kathy Hochul rescinded all mask mandates in the state earlier this month, but allowed individual counties to continue enforcing mask rules if they deemed it necessary for maintaining public health.
Mr Adams announced a week later that he was lifting most of the mask mandates in New York City schools, but not for students between the ages of 2 and 4 years old. That decision prompted some pushback by anti-mask parents and protesters over the weekend.
It's unclear if the pushback prompted the mayor to make the announcement.
Mask mandates are rolling back across the United States as Covid-19 case numbers continue to drop in the aftermath of the Omicron variant's dominance in January and February.
While case numbers are falling, a new strain – omicron variant BA.2, sometimes called "stealth omicron" – is beginning to spread throughout the US. New York City Health Commissioner Dr Mary Bassett told reporters that the "stealth omicron" variant now represents 42 per cent of all coronavirus cases in New York City.
While the stealth omicron variant is reportedly 50 to 60 per cent more contagious, both Dr Bassett and Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, have said they do not believe the new strain will cause a surge in cases in the same way Omicron and Delta did.
“Hopefully, we won’t see a surge. I don’t think we will. The easiest way to prevent that is to continue to get people vaccinated. And for those who have been vaccinated, to continue to get them boosted, so that’s really where we stand right now,” Dr Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.” The doctor did say it was likely the US would see an “uptick” in coronavirus cases.
