Newly installed Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday mandated masks for students and staff at schools throughout New York State, and also ordered mandatory COVID-19 vaccines for staff, or an option of weekly testing.
Hochul said the moves were necessary to help bring under control the surging delta variant. “None of us want a rerun of last year’s horrors with COVID-19,” she said.
“I’m immediately directing the Department of Health to institute universal masking for anyone entering our schools,” Hochul said.
While New York has made some progress in the fight against COVID-19, she said, “too many are yet not vaccinated, putting themselves and their communities at risk.”
Hochul said she made the move on vaccinations after months of consulting parents, elected officials, teachers, school boards and school superintendents.
“Priority number one — we get children back to school and protect the environment so they can learn and everyone is safe,” she said. “As a result, we need to require vaccinations for all school personnel with an option to test out weekly, at least for now.”
Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the division of pediatric diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, praised Hochul’s move to require masks.
“I think it will help move the state closer to protecting all the children that are in the schools,” she said. “I think it is an appropriate move at a time when we have such a high rate of delta, which is so much more contagious than the original COVID strains that we saw.”
Nachman added that parents should model behavior for their children by wearing masks to grocery stores and other crowded public places.
Before she was sworn in as governor Tuesday, Hochul had indicated she planned to require masks in schools.
Last week in Long Beach, she said, “I want to telegraph my intentions but cannot make anything happen until Tuesday. I have done the due diligence to determine the authority in the department of health, and I expect to make an announcement very shortly on Tuesday.”
“People should be ready” for her to issue a mask mandate, Hochul said.
After his COVID-19 state of emergency declaration was lifted, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said he lacked the legal authority to impose mask mandates on his own.
Hochul’s assertions and then her action contradicted that stance.
“Mask mandates are something that the department of health has the authority to call for,” Hochul said in Queens last week, adding: “I believe that we’ll need mask mandates for children to go back to schools and that’ll have to be universal, it’ll be statewide.”
She also said the state could end up lifting a statewide school mask mandate in areas with lower positivity rates.
The mask debate has inspired passionate debate on both sides of the issue. Medical experts say they are key — along with getting everyone vaccinated — to stamping out the virus, especially as the delta variant sends case numbers rising again.
But some parents contend masks infringe on their personal freedoms and don’t want their children wearing them. Signs have popped up on some lawns stating, “Unmask our kids.”
Caught in the middle of the debate were local school superintendents and school boards, tasked with deciding on a policy for their community. Hochul’s decision takes that question out of their hands and makes masks mandatory.
Check back for updates on this developing story.
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