By Rami Ayyub

(Reuters] – New Jersey governor Mark Murphy and Delaware Governor Chris Christie announced on Monday their plans to lift mandates for school masks within the next few weeks. This is in response to the Omicron variant’s surge in coronavirus cases in New Jersey, Delaware, and other states.

This change signals that at least some Democratic governors (New Jersey’s Phil Murphy, Delaware’s John Carney) are keen to shift towards policies that allow the virus to be part of everyday life and take states out of emergency status.

Governors have decided to stop requiring school administrators, students and teachers to don masks. This is also a way to reduce the divisions that can result from the pandemic. In some cases, Republican leaders, such as those in Florida and Texas have disallowed mask mandates for schoolchildren. However, Democrats generally support the idea to stop new infections.

New Jersey’s Governor Murphy said that his state will lift the school mask mandate effective March 7. This is despite the fact that New Jersey has seen a decline in new cases within the last week.

It is difficult to balance public health and normalcy. Murphy posted on Twitter: “But we can responsible take this step because of declining COVID number and growth in vaccines.”

Murphy stated later that schools and private childcare providers will still be allowed enforce and maintain mask mandates.

“Any visitor, teacher, student or educator who wishes to keep masking while insides can do so freely…We will not tolerate any person being put down for choosing to be mask-up.”

Delaware Governor Carney announced that the state would repeal its indoor public mask requirement on Friday and eliminate its school mask mandate of March 31.

Carney tweeted, “We are in a better place now than we were a few weeks ago.” However, he also said that the virus “still poses a risk for serious illness, especially among people who have not received their vaccines.”

SHIFTING POLICIES

Last week, President Joe Biden met Murphy and the other U.S. Governors at the White House. The state leaders expressed their desire for normalcy almost two years after the pandemic that forced schools and colleges to move to online education and then to establish mask policies.

Pennsylvania lifted its mandate for school masks last week, and New York said it is reevaluating their indoor masking policies. Each state has Democratic governors.

Data from Reuters shows that although U.S. Coronavirus deaths have continued to increase, reaching 900,000. On Friday, this figure was higher than ever. Each pandemic surge brings about a rise in deaths, but not the number of new cases.

Leana Wen is a former Baltimore health commissioner and a professor of public health at George Washington University. She believes that lifting the mask mandates was the best step.

This “marks an important shift away from a government-imposed requirement and towards individual choice.” She wrote that it helps preserve public health authority so that it is available for use again when needed.”

New Jersey parents were concerned about lifting the mandatory mask requirement and wanted transparency in decision making, especially by school board members.

“If we don’t follow state guidance on lifting mask mandate, we need to know what metrics are being used to make that determination and what metrics we need to achieve in order to drop the mask mandate,” Cheryl Barkin, whose sons attend middle school and high school in New Jersey’s South Orange-Maplewood School District, wrote in an email to her school board representative.

Burbio.com collects data on school calendars and reports that many U.S. school district have moved to in-person learning as a result of shifting masking policies. Last week, an average of 180 schools nationwide stopped offering instruction in person. This is down from the 6,000 that were offered on January 14.