The Department of Health order will take effect Tuesday, Sept. 7, the day after Labor Day, and will require students, faculty and staff to wear masks when inside, two people reported on the plan. People were not allowed to disclose details before an official announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The order will not apply to sports students while they play, people said. One person said the masking order will apply to public and private schools as well as daycare facilities.
Wolf and administration officials were scheduled to hold a press conference on COVID-19 and schools on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Wolf declined to comment when a reporter asked him about the mask’s warrant outside his Capitol offices Tuesday morning.
The Democratic governor took action after Republican House and Senate leaders rejected his request to pass legislation requiring masks in classrooms. GOP lawmakers acknowledged that coronavirus cases are rising again across the state, but insisted that local leaders were in the best position to respond to the pandemic.
Less than a month ago, Wolf had ruled out a state mask warrant for schools after requiring them last year. But the highly contagious delta variant of coronavirus has changed the administration’s calculation of what it takes to keep students in class.
Pennsylvania now averages more than 3,200 new confirmed infections daily, 20 times the number of cases it reported on a typical day in early July. More than 1,700 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, seven times more than last month. Deaths have doubled in two weeks to about 20 a day.
The two Pennsylvania statewide teacher unions had urged K-12 schools to require masks on school buildings, citing the delta threat. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends masks in schools for students, staff, and teachers.
But masking is a very controversial topic and school board meetings have been the scene of heated debate as parents argue for and against it. Last week, parents of children with special needs sued a suburban Philadelphia school board that refused to demand masks.
Some schools have reimposed mask mandates on their own after starting the year without them.
The North Schuylkill School District began requiring indoor masks after forcing the quarantine of 60 students. It was said that only 11 students would have had to do quarantine if they had been masked.
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