That mask your kid has been wearing to school — for forever, it seems — is going to continue to be part of the daily wardrobe.
At least for now, Monongalia Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
Campbell said the local district is staying the course on facial coverings, even as omicron appears to be waning across West Virginia.
That’s as a handful of districts across the state have done away with the statute altogether.
Harrison County’s school district, Mon’s neighbor in north-central West Virginia, voted earlier this week to make masking optional. So did Jefferson and Morgan counties — along with Kanawha, Wayne and Wood.
The County Alert Map maintained by the state Department of Health and Human Resources was sporting a new face on Wednesday, also, with no red counties listed for the first time in months.
Mon, in the meantime, was showing yellow on that edition, and Preston was gold on the map.
A total of 15 counties were sitting in green, which is the best hue for safety and low infection rates.
However, another 37 people couldn’t be kept safe from the contagion in recent days.
That’s how many new deaths were reported to the DHHR from Tuesday into Wednesday morning.
A 45-year-old woman from Kanawha County is the youngest of the most recent victims in the grim roll call.
Of the more than 5,200 active cases statewide, 792 of the sufferers are hospitalized, including 15 pediatric cases, four of whom are in intensive care, the DHHR reported.
Mon’s Board of Education meets again this coming Tuesday, Campbell said, and members are expected to discuss masking.
Which is also a subject he’s been discussing daily with Dr. Lee B. Smith, the county’s medical director.
Omicron is more infectious than its delta cousin, but the symptoms are way less severe, Campbell said, which will likely be the motivator, when it does come time to lift the masks in Mon’s schools.
And the lighter symptoms are why the school district, at Smith’s direction, decided recently to drop quarantining and contact tracing — so long as masks stayed in place.
“We certainly don’t want to go back to that,” the superintendent said of the two protocols that were removed. “So right now, it’s a wait-and-see kind of thing.”
Campbell is also heartened that in-school booster shots will be given to students 12 and up next week.
“That gives every middle school student and every high school student an opportunity,” he said.
“Things are moving in the right direction.”
TWEET @DominionPostWV
