Jackson County leaders consider new school mask mandate, but hospitalizations are dropping quickly
By MORGAN MOBLEY, SHAIN BERGAN
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JACKSON COUNTY, Missouri (KCTV) — Jackson County officials on Monday morning are set to discuss whether to bring back a countywide school mask mandate, even as local COVID hospitalizations numbers drop significantly.
The Jackson County Legislature is set to discuss the matter at 10 a.m. You can watch that live on KCTV5.com and on the KCTV5 Facebook page.
The mask requirement would apply to K-12 students within schools in Jackson County.
The proposal was initial brought back up a few weeks ago, but was tabled to Monday. County Executive Frank White spoke up at that meeting in favor of the ordinance.
“As long as we politicize masks, as long as we politicize vaccines, we’re never going to get out of this,” White said.
Some school districts have recently reimposed their own mask requirements during the Omicron surge—most recently, Kansas City Public Schools and the Lee’s Summit School District.
Just about every county in the metro has seen its COVID case rate and hospitalizations plummet in the past week or so. Metro-wide COVID hospitalizations are down 19 percent. Johnson County is down 22 percent, and Jackson County’s hospitalization rate has dropped 30 percent.
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