Masking will not be required for upcoming school year

Health officials say vaccines are widely available, immunity levels are up

Masking and COVID-19 vaccines will not be required when students head back to school on Aug. 1, state officials announced Tuesday.

While the state Department of Health "will strongly encourage indoor mask use when COVID levels are high or medium," it will be up to individual teachers and students to decide to wear a mask or not, State Epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Kemble said during a news conference.

"Why are we making this change now? The COVID landscape has changed. We're at a different trajectory in the pandemic at this point in time," Kemble said, pointing out that vaccines are now widely available, including for children under age 5, and there are high levels of immunity from both the vaccine and natural infection during recent omicron surges.

"In those surges we have seen less impact in terms of intensive care unit admissions, critical illness, so we are beginning to see a trend towards a more routine approach to disease transmission," Kemble said.

Public schools were among some of the last state facilities where masks were still required. The state Department of Education had allowed schools two options: optional indoor masking with quarantine requirements for close contacts of COVID-19 cases, or universal indoor masking with no quarantine requirements for close contacts.

"Although it was unpopular among some of our communities, maintaining universal indoor masking all of last school year allowed us to keep more students in school for in-person learning," said Heidi Armstrong, deputy superintendent of the state Department of Education.

Some rules will remain the same -- students or staff who test positive for COVID-19 or have symptoms must still stay home for at least five days and isolate regardless of whether they've been vaccinated or not, according to the Department of Health. They may end the isolation period if it has been at least five full days since their symptoms started (or since their test date, if they had no symptoms), if they have had no fever for 24 hours and haven't taken fever-reducing medications and if their symptoms are improving.

They should still take precautions until day 10, including wearing a mask, avoiding travel and avoiding people who are at high risk.

However, along with dropping the universal masking rules for the coming year, schools will lift the quarantine requirements for close contacts who are exposed on campus, Armstrong said. A five-day quarantine is still recommended for household exposures, with students or teachers returning with a mask for days 6-10, Kemble said.

Masks could also be required for specific classrooms that are experiencing an outbreak or seeing a high rate of absenteeism, for example.

"So instead of a general policy of everyone masking all the time, if you have a particular classroom that's impacted by an outbreak, that class might be required to mask for the 10-day period after the last exposure in the class, for instance," Kemble said. "So it's a much more targeted strategy and using that masking tool in a way that is not going to impact all the learning activities across the entire campus."

Kemble said "at this time, there is no proposal on the table for requiring COVID-19 vaccines for school entry.

"We do obviously think it's a very good public health tool, so we strongly recommend that families consider getting all their vaccines up to do date for COVID-19," she said.

Physical distancing also won't be strongly emphasized.

"It is difficult to accomplish all of the learning objectives that teachers have while trying to implement strict physical distancing requirements, and we've seen over time that other mitigation strategies can be used to mitigate risk," Kemble said. "So we really are looking at trying to move towards a more normal classroom experience in this fall. Again, we'll continue to watch what happens as a result of that and monitor the data. And if we need to make adjustments, we will."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently ranks Maui, Hawaii and Honolulu counties at a high level of risk for community spread and Kauai County at a medium risk. Kemble said the data takes into account case rates as well as how full the intensive care units are and what the hospital capacity is like in certain areas.

Cases, overall, have been declining statewide, with the average number of daily cases going from 756.9 on June 21 to 536.6 on July 4, the latest data available on the DOH website. Maui County has gone from averaging 96 new cases a day to 66.4 cases a day during the same period.

Maui Health reported 30 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. Tuesday. Of those patients, 23 were vaccinated, including 16 who received a booster shot, and seven were unvaccinated. None of the patients were in the ICU or on a ventilator.

Armstrong said that families who would prefer distance learning can check with their individual schools about options. There is also an application on the DOE's website for the state-sponsored distance learning program, which Armstrong estimated about 115 students are currently enrolled in.

State officials are still finalizing the guidance but wanted to announce the main changes so parents can prepare, Kemble said.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.