New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday that the city will see an end to the mask mandate for children under the age of five, in what is his latest move to restore a sense of normalcy in the city.
At a news conference at City Hall, Adams said that the mandate would end April 4 as long as Covid cases remain low.
It is expected that the end of the children’s mask mandate will create some controversy in New York. Case rates for Covid have increased slightly over the past week, and some health experts have vocalized their worry about the newest Omicron sub-variant BA.2.
In Europe, BA.2 is fueling a rise in cases. American health experts fear that the same fate is coming for the U.S., and will create another surge across the country.
New York City’s new health commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said last week that he believed the mask mandate for children was necessary because that age of children was not yet eligible for vaccinations. However, many parents in the city criticized the mayor for retaining the mandate for preschool children.
Vasan on Tuesday agreed with Adams’ decision to end the requirement as long as the Covid cases remain low, but did stress that removing the masks was optional for children and their parents. He urged people to respect the choices that families make for themselves.
The mask mandate applies for children under 5 in the city’s 4-K and 3-K preschool classrooms, which see about 95,000 students across the city. It also applied to other preschool programs that have contracts with the U.S. Department of Education.
New York state never required children under the age of two to wear masks in daycare centers, so the mask mandate is mostly applied in the city to children aged 2 to 5.
Older students, aged 5 to about 18, saw the elimination of mask mandates earlier in March when Adams ended the mandate from kindergarten through 12th grade.
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