New York mayor Eric Adams announced on Thursday that preschoolers will no longer be required to wear masks in daycare as of Monday.
“Because we have followed the data, which shows that cases are steadily falling, we’ve beaten back the latest COVID-19 surge,” Adams said in a statement.
“Throughout the current wave, schools have remained the safest places for children and beginning Monday, June 13, we will make masks optional for 2-4 year old children in all early childhood settings,” Adams said. “We still strongly recommend that New Yorkers of all ages continue to wear masks indoors and we will continue to make masks available for any child or school staff member who wishes to continue wearing them.”
The end of the mandate comes at the end of the school year.
New York extended its mask mandate for toddlers in March, with city officials citing the lack of an available Covid vaccine for children under age 5. Meanwhile, students ages 5-18 in city public schools were not required to wear masks.
A Staten Island judge blocked the mandate in response to a lawsuit by parents of toddlers in city schools, but the Adams administration immediately appealed the decision, citing a rise in Covid cases driven by the Omicron sub-variant.
“You should keep your masks on your children,” Adams said at the time. Ultimately, a New York appeals court allowed the mandate to remain in place while the lawsuit makes its way through the court system.
The mandate has drawn backlash from some parents, including a former city employee who called out Adams over the issue while the mayor was giving a press conference.
“There’s fear here that should be properly allayed by the public-health officials doing the right thing and explaining the risks properly to parents, rather than making them feel like this group is somehow uniquely vulnerable, which according to the science they really aren’t,” Michael Chessa, the lawyer overseeing the lawsuit against the toddler mask mandate, told National Review in April.