WALLOWA COUNTY — Schools and other indoor public settings will no longer require people to wear face masks beginning March 19, about two years after such mandates were first ordered because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a press release from the Oregon Health Authority.

The OHA announced the change Thursday, Feb. 24, as hospitalization numbers drop and are projected to reach levels below those at the start of the surge in the COVID omicron variant, the press release said.

Earlier in February, the OHA announced that the general indoor mask requirement would be lifted by March 31, with the option of lifting it sooner if conditions improved enough. Feedback from school districts around the state indicated that preparations for the transition could be completed earlier.

Officials at Wallowa County schools anticipate and welcome the return to local control of any mask mandate.

Emergency board meeting

Mandy Decker, chairwoman of the Enterprise School Board, said the issue will be the subject of a special meeting the board will hold Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. rather than waiting for its next regular meeting March 14. The public can participate by accessing the remote link on the district’s website, Decker said.

“I can’t speak for the entire board, but my opinion is we will follow the state’s guidelines,” Decker said Thursday. “The board has already said we’d like local control. … My opinion is choice is really important.”

Lance Homan, superintendent of Joseph Charter School, said the school board will officially decide if it will take advantage of the option at its next meeting March 14. He declined to speculate on what its decision will be.

However, he said, last summer the board voted to make masks optional. But then the county got hit with a surge in coronavirus cases and the governor and the OHA rescinded local control.

Wallowa Superintendent Tammy Jones was in meetings with other school officials Thursday morning and had already come to similar conclusions as her counterparts elsewhere in the county. She, too, said the school board in Wallowa would consider an official decision on the matter at its next board meeting, March 14.

“Over the next weeks, we’re going to learn more details,” she said, such as about quarantines, isolation, contact tracing and other related issues.

Jones recalled that at the July board meeting, the Wallowa School Board voted — like Joseph did — to make masks optional, a decision rendered moot by the uptick in cases that followed.

“We’ve done our best to live with it,” Jones said, adding that the recent change “is good news for us.”

School officials will find it a relief to not have to enforce the mask mandate. It’s one more thing they have to discipline students over.

“At times, yeah,” it’s been difficult, Enterprise Superintendent Tom Crane said.

Homan agreed, saying, “At times, for sure.”

The OHA statement continued to recommend universal masking in K-12 settings where children are required to attend. Those settings bring together vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, as well as individuals who are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 illness.

However, local school officials said that while their students are required to attend school, they can do so remotely and are not required to be in the building.

Case numbers subsiding

According to the press release, by March 19 it is expected that 400 or fewer people per day statewide would be hospitalized with the virus, a level the state experienced prior to the arrival of the omicron variant. A recent modeling report by Oregon Health and Science University predicted the state would reach that total around March 20.

Daily COVID-19 hospitalizations have declined 48% since peaking in late January, the release stated. Over the past two weeks, hospitalizations have fallen by an average of more than 30 a day. On Feb. 24, there were 528 people hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state. In Region 9, which includes Wallowa County, that number is at 15. 

Reported COVID-19 infections also have dropped precipitously in recent weeks. Over the past month, new infections have declined by more than 80%. The seven-day moving average for new cases is 84% lower than at the peak of the omicron surge.