New York City students ages five-and-under will be required to continue wearing masks in school even if Mayor Eric Adams lifts the school mask mandate for all other students in the coming days, a City Hall official told Gothamist.
The official said the city’s youngest students will keep wearing masks because children in that age group are not yet eligible to receive a Covid vaccine.
Adams said in a statement on Sunday that the mask mandate in New York City schools could be lifted by March 7, “if we see no unforeseen spikes and our numbers continue to show a low level of risk.”
New York governor Kathy Hochul lifted a statewide school mask mandate on Wednesday. Local authorities and districts may impose masking requirements as they see fit.
“We believe that by Wednesday we’ll be able to have a situation where we’ll have the lifting of the mask requirement and children, that includes children who are in child care centers, ages 2 and up who are covered right now,” Hochul said on Monday.
Meanwhile on Thursday, New York City comptroller Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams released a joint letter calling for various measures to protect students from Covid next fall. The measures include adding Covid vaccines to the city’s “standard vaccination requirements” for students, as well as providing “opt-in, all-masked classrooms or settings for those who need or want them.”
School districts across the country struggled to return students to class after the Covid pandemic forced shutdowns of schools in March 2020, and many enforced mask mandates for students in order to learn in-person. California, Oregon, and Washington will drop their own statewide school mask mandates later this month.