Maryland Elementary School Mandates Masks for Some Children

Masks in Maryland in a file image. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

An elementary school in Maryland is forcing some students to wear masks.

Three or more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the previous 10 days, school administrators told parents of some of the students at Rosemary Hills Elementary School in Silver Spring in a Sept. 5 letter.

Principal Rebecca Irwin Kennedy said she was imposing a mask mandate on students in the classes that were attended by the COVID-positive students.

“Additional KN95 masks have been distributed and students and staff in identified classes or activities will be required to mask while in school for the next 10 days, except while eating or drinking,” Ms. Kennedy said in the letter.

She said the move stemmed from a desire “to keep our school environment as safe as possible for in-person teaching and learning, and to prevent further transmission of COVID-19 in this group.”

School officials did not provide any citations to studies or other data supporting their mask mandate and did not respond to a request for comment.

Randomized, controlled trials have not provided evidence supporting masking, a Cochrane Review found.

“I think it’s fair to say that if you want to wear a mask then you should have a choice, okay. But in the absence of evidence, you shouldn’t be forcing anybody to do so,” Tom Jefferson, one of the authors of the review, has said.

Margery Smelkinson, an infectious diseases scientist at the U.S. National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases, expressed concern about the new mandate.

“What year is this? Will the need to do something, no matter how ineffective or harmful, ever end?” Ms. Smelkinson wrote on X.

Dr. Joseph Marine, a cardiac electrophysiologist, added: “Another reason why masking pseudoscience has to be debunked. Until it is, public school bureaucrats will be inflicting them on small children in perpetuity.”

Montgomery County Policy

The Montgomery County school district policy is that masks are optional, with exceptions, according to a back-to-school message viewed by WTOP.

Exceptions include mandating masks for people recovering from a COVID-19 infection, district officials said, pointing to recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Masks “may be recommended or required in outbreak situations,” the district said.

Dr. Patricia Kapunan, the district’s health officer, said the policy was focused in part on ensuring “continued access to in-person learning.”

Like most school systems, Montgomery County shut down schools earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The district mandated masks through March 2022.

CDC Recommendations

The CDC recommends people wear masks as soon as they find out they were exposed to a positive case.

The public health agency advises wearing a mask “any time you are around others inside your home or indoors in public” for 10 days following the exposure.

The recommendations apply regardless of vaccination status, as data have increasingly shown the vaccines do little to stop transmission or infection.

Separately, the CDC says that people who have not been exposed should still wear masks if they are in a jurisdiction where the CDC’s COVID-19 hospital admission rankings are medium or high.

The CDC’s recommendations apply to people as young as 2, in contradiction to advice from many other health entities. The World Health Organization, for instance, recommends against masking children under 6.

The CDC has not updated its masking guidance since 2022.

Other Mandates

In recent weeks, additional institutions have imposed masking mandates.

UMass Memorial Hospital in Massachusetts, United Health Services in New York, and Kaiser Permanente in California are among the health care institutions that have recently announced mask mandates for at least staff members.

Lionsgate studios in California and Morris Brown College in Georgia were among other entities to announce mask mandates, but they backtracked soon after amid criticism.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a former government official, said over the weekend that he hoped people would abide by the CDC’s recommendations.

“I would hope that if we get to the point that the volume of cases is such and organizations like the CDC recommends ... that people wear masks, I would hope that people abide by that recommendation and take into account the risks to themselves and their families,” he said on CNN. Dr. Fauci acknowledged that the data are “less strong” on masking having an effect at the population level, but alleged that “when talking as an individual basis of someone protecting themselves or protecting themselves from spreading it to others, there’s no doubt that there are many studies that show that there is an advantage.”

Biden Takes Off Mask

After First Lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 this week, the White House said President Joe Biden would be masking moving forward even after testing negative twice.

“He’s going to be very cautious, he’s going to wear a mask,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, pointing to the CDC guidance.

President Biden arrived at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House on Wednesday wearing a black mask, but took it off shortly after it started.

President Biden did not replace the mask, even after he stopped speaking.

The rest of the crowd also appeared to be unmasked, according to video footage.