COVID: Oakland Unified ends indoor mask mandate at schools
OAKLAND (CBS SF) -- Students in Oakland on Monday were allowed in class without their masks on for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic as Oakland Unified dropped its indoor mask mandate.
Oakland Unified was one of a few Bay Area school districts that kept its mask mandate in place after state health restrictions were relaxed earlier in April.
In San Francisco, the remaining classroom mask mandates were lifted for all students no matter their grade on April 4.
"As you know, OUSD has kept the indoor mask requirement in place to be sure we didn't see a major surge coming out of spring break," the district said in a letter to parents earlier this month. "Fortunately, the numbers within OUSD and countywide have stayed relatively low following spring break."
But the letter added -- "There is always the possibility that we would need to revert to requiring indoor masks if we receive new guidance from public health officials."
Oakland will likewise continue to recommend mask wearing and enforce it in certain circumstances.
A 5th grade teacher KPIX 5 talked to said some are ready for the masks to be off, while others are still uneasy about lifting the mandate.
Oakland teacher Megan Bumpus says a March survey teachers did revealed 61% of respondents felt masks should be required the rest of the school year.
Bumpus said she's excited to see kids faces during her lessons, but as a parent of two students in the district, lifting the mandate makes her a little nervous.
"The question that I have as an elementary school teacher -- I teach 5th grade -- is what happens if a parents tells their kid you have to keep your mask on and other kids won't," she explained. "And then me as a teacher, am I supposed to enforce that? The rule is you don't have to wear a mask, so I can't really push it. I think there are question around protocols."
Bumpus said she is keeping her mask on and is going make sure her sons do the same.
COVID cases have slowly but steadily ticked up across the majority of the Bay Area since mid-March due to the highly contagious omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants.
In San Francisco, the 7-day average test positivity rate is at 5.2 percent. On March 16, the 7-day test positivity rate was 2.4 percent.
Although cases are on the rise, UCSF infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong doesn't want to classify what's happening right now as a surge.
"We have a very dramatic decoupling so far between what we see in the community and what we see in the hospitals. Of course, hospitalizations lag cases in the community, traditionally, but these cases have been going up for some time and we still haven't seen a big impact in the hospitals," Dr. Chin-Hong said. "I think two weeks would give enough time to make sure that lag won't be reflected in the hospitals."
Even so, Chin-Hong thinks the increasing number of infections will impact the region.
"You will see disruptions in the community with positive cases -- people taken out of the workforce," he said. "It is possible that test positivity is even higher but it's uncertain because we don't really know who's getting tested officially compared to who's getting tested at home."
Here's how Chin-Hong described the current situation.
"It's actually more akin to what people are hoping to have at the end of the day: an endemic phase. It's just that I wouldn't want to call it an endemic yet because it's not predictable what the next new variant will do long after this recent BA.1 surge followed by BA.2. It's like a one-two punch, which is very different than, 'Punch, wait a while -- everyone's immunity goes down -- and then punch again,'" he said.
