Dr. Jha says lifting mask mandates in the next few weeks is ‘reasonable’

As COVID cases across the country continue drop dramatically, Dr. Ashish Jha said on the Today Show Feb. 17 that in the next few weeks, it’s “going to be reasonable to lift mask mandates.”

Nationwide as of Feb. 9 there was a 42% decrease in the seven-day moving average of new positive tests compared to the week before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Infections … are dropping precipitously, hospital capacity has gotten better, deaths are going to get much better in the next few weeks,” said Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “I think it’s pretty reasonable time to pull off the mask mandates.”

The last few weeks have also seen states across the country not renewing their school mask mandates, usually letting them expire in the next few weeks, including in Massachusetts. Jha said he thinks it’s “pretty reasonable” to lift mask mandates in schools, pointing to all school-aged kids being eligible for vaccination as one factor. 

Of course, even if mask mandates are lifted there is a chance they will need to be reinstated later. Jha said although we may want to believe that future variants and surges will be less and less severe, that is not necessarily the case. If it turns out that we do need to reimpose public health mandates, Jha said clear communication is important.  

“I think communication here is key — when we lift mask mandates, we should make it clear that if there is another surge, if there’s another variant, we are going to ask people to put their masks back on for a short period of time,” Jha said. “I think if we telegraph that very carefully, and clearly, people are gonna be pretty reasonable and be willing to do that.”

Jha said that if we continue to have a significant number of people who do not get vaccinated, we will very likely continue seeing surges and hospitals filling up. He said we are just waiting to “see what mother nature throws at us” and that we need to get ready. 

As mask mandates fall around the country, Jha pointed out that one-way masking can be effective — if you are masked in a crowd of unmasked people, you still get a degree of protection.

“If you are wearing a high-quality mask it actually provides a very high degree of protection, especially when you couple that with somebody who’s vaccinated and boosted,” Jha said. “You can really protect yourself even if everybody else around you is not masked.”