Late last month New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that if COVID-19 cases stay low, New York City public schools would lift their mask mandate.

Face masks were made optional for all NYC public school students in grades K through 12 as of March 7th. 

Free at-home tests and a number of testing and vaccination sites are available throughout the city in attempts to help COVID-19 cases stay low. 

Local governments and businesses are now able to choose whether or not they require masks to be worn indoors. Those who test positive for COVID-19 are still required by most to wear masks and quarantine indoors.

Some places like public transportation, healthcare facilities, and homeless shelters still require masks to be worn. 

WJPS students have differing opinions about this change in school rules. Freshman Jin Jin Baldwin said, “I think it’s good because no one will get mad if you take off your mask for water or food.”

Yuqi Xiong, a WJPS freshman said, “I think it’s a negative impact for us because there’s still lots of people out there who haven’t got vaccines and yet the COVID cases haven’t completely decreased to zero.”

“I think that the mask mandate is something good for us. I say this because I think it protects us from the virus and we don’t get sick,” stated Maya Guadarrama, another WJPS freshman.