Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday that he will lift the state’s indoor mask mandate by Feb. 28, but face coverings will still be required in K-12 schools for now.
Pritzker is the eighth blue-state governor to announce an end to masking indoors in some capacity this week. The governors are aware that the public is eager to ditch masks and return to a sense of normalcy now that the pandemic has shown signs of calming. They are moving toward the policies of red states that have avoided mandates and restrictions for months, even before the omicron wave hit and then subsided.
“We’re better than all of the states around us at keeping people healthy and safe and certainly out of the hospital during this last omicron wave, in part because people wear their masks,” Pritzker said Wednesday. “The intention is to lift the mask mandate in the indoor locations by February 28.”
Illinois’s COVID-19 prognosis is looking significantly brighter than it did about a month ago when more than 32,000 new cases on average were reported over seven days. The average has plummeted to roughly 6,800 daily new cases on average during the week ending Feb. 8. Hospitalizations in Illinois are also down 47% from two weeks ago, according to New York Times tracking.
THE SEVEN BLUE STATES ANNOUNCING ENDS TO MASK MANDATES
“COVID is not gone, and it won’t be gone on Feb. 28,” said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. “Our path forward includes keeping these tools that we’ve been talking about close, and that’s the masks and the vaccines, testing, creating safer settings through better ventilation. We can do all these things, and we can coexist with COVID.”
Pritzker also said that his decision whether to lift the mask mandate in public schools is forthcoming. Pritzker has been contending with a legal battle that resulted in a temporary restraining order set by a judge in Sangamon County that prohibited certain school districts from enforcing the mandate.
BIDEN SCIENCE ADVISER HELD UP TO $1M IN BIONTECH STOCK WHILE PROMOTING VACCINE
“The equation for schools just looks different right now than it does for the general population,” Pritzker said. “Schools need a little more time for community infection rates to drop, for our youngest learners to become vaccine eligible, and for more parents to get their kids vaccinated.”
