Masks to Become Optional on March 4, IU Officials said

Clayton Young | @smartguy_92

Indiana University officials announced last month that masks will be made optional on all campuses starting March 4.

The decision comes from observing a decline of cases throughout the state and working with the anticipated expiration of Monroe county’s mask mandate.

“All decisions related to masking take into consideration [the] local. . . availability of hospitals [and] risk to the students,” said Cole Beeler, the medical Director for Infection Prevention at Indiana University Hospital, “What we’ve seen across Indiana, and internally at IU, has been a very steep improvement in the COVID numbers”

Monroe county’s COVID cases for the month of February are down 28% from January’s reported 7000 cases. The downward trend is replicated in Indiana’s overall cases from the past two months, with multiple other states following the trend.

The trend towards fewer cases is a sign of March promising a month where COVID isn’t around as much, Beeler said.

While there is a promising end in sight for the pandemic, a new variant is making the rounds along with Omicron. The B.A 2 variant makes up about 10% of current cases in the United States, according to the Center for Disease Control’s data tracker ending on February 28. The CDC has not listed B.A 2 or any of its five lineages, as variants of concern.

“This is the ‘stealth variant’ of Omicron. . . I think we aren’t really seeing. . . that it’s the new variant of concern,” Beeler said, “The Delta variant had 200-300 subvariants like the B.A. 2. This is not abnormal for a virus as they make small mutations.”

Beeler emphasizes that despite the amount of technology in decoding mutant genomes, we tend to hyper analyze on the possibility of dangerous mutations running amok. He says that only time will tell if B.A. 2 has consequences outside of being another subvariant.

Despite the B.A. 2 variant emergence, Monroe County schools are no longer required to contract trace or report COVID cases to the Indiana Department of Health. According to a February 22 press release, masks must be worn on busses, despite the county’s decision to make masks optional. New procedures also state that a negative COVID test is no longer required to return to school.

Dr. Aaron Carroll, the chief health officer for Indiana University, says that personal choice should be a factor behind further COVID protocols, and that one-way masking is based on one’s preference to mask-up in public spaces.