CORONAVIRUS, Health, Oregon

Oregon Health Authority will lift indoor mask mandate by end of March

In a sudden turnaround, the Oregon Health Authority announced Monday it will lift the state’s indoor mask requirements by the end of March for indoor places, including schools.

The announcement came on the same day that the agency filed a permanent state rule requiring masks indoors in public places with the Secretary of State’s Office. The rule was put in place to ensure mask requirements continued. The temporary rule expires on Tuesday.

The health authority indicated in a statement that its decision was guided by a slowing in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations.

“Over the past week, the average number of newly diagnosed cases has dropped about 40% in Oregon,” it said in the statement. “As of today, Oregon’s seven-day total in COVID-19 hospitalizations inched down another 1%, with 1,072 people reported hospitalized with COVID-19.”

The agency said it expected hospitalizations and cases to keep falling.

“By late March, health scientists expect that about 400 or fewer Oregonians would be hospitalized with Covid-19, the level of hospitalizations the state experienced before the Omicron variant began to spread,” the statement said.

That projection aligns with the latest forecast by Oregon Health & Science University, which estimated last week that hospitalizations would peak this past weekend and then fall rapidly.

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“We should see COVID-19 hospitalizations drop by the end of March because so many Oregonians are wearing masks and taking other steps to protect themselves and each other, such as getting a booster shot or vaccinating their children. At that point, it will be safer to lift mask requirements,” Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state epidemiologist said in a statement.

In the meantime, he said the requirements need to stay in place.

“The evidence from Oregon and around the country is clear: Masks save lives by slowing the spread of Covid-19,” Sidelinger said.

Oregon’s indoor mask requirement has generated a lot of controversy, with several hundred people voicing opposition to the rule during a recent public hearing and in written testimony. They questioned the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of the virus, said the rule infringed on their personal rights and pointed out that Oregon was one of the few states to maintain the mandate.

State officials and OHSU, however, say the mandate has saved lives in Oregon. The state has the third lowest case rate in the country and the seventh lowest death rate, the news release said. To keep rates low, it said people need to continue masking up.

The agency could lift the indoor requirement for the public sooner than March 31 but it will keep that date for schools to give them time to ensure that students are safe, the release said.

This story originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle and is republished here under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Read more stories at oregoncapitalchronicle.com.

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