PHILADELPHIA—The Health Department announced that the school indoor mask mandate is no longer in force. Schools and educational settings within Philadelphia can now allow mask optional policies in their facilities and on their campuses. This policy applies to all early childhood education settings, pre-K, kindergarten through 12th grade schools, after-school programs, and school camps. Head Start programs are not covered and are still required to enforce universal masking for all staff and children two and older under existing Federal Rule. The covered school settings will continue to be mask optional until/unless the City moves to the Mask Precautions COVID Response Level. In addition, the Health Department will be enforcing a mask mandate for all schools for the entirety of the week following spring break.

The Health Department also announced an update to the COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard. The dashboard now includes detailed information on 5-11 year old vaccination rates, boosters for Philadelphians 12 and older, and updates to some percentages due to data cleaning. It also incorporates changes due to the correction of errors made during the incorporation of data from the state that were discovered during a routine review.

“The number of people who are testing positive for COVID in Philadelphia is rapidly approaching the lowest we’ve ever seen,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole. “Because our case counts are so low, and dropping, we feel that it’s safe enough for people to go unmasked indoors, including in schools. We haven’t seen a rise in cases in Philadelphia since we stopped enforcing the broader indoor mask mandate, nor have we seen a rise in cases in other jurisdictions that have dropped their school mask mandate.”

The City’s COVID Response Levels use metrics tracking the spread and severity of COVID in Philadelphia to ensure that the City’s response is the least restrictive necessary to reduce the spread of the virus. On February 16, 2022, the Health Department announced that the city was in the Mask Precautions Level, which ended the indoor dining vaccine mandate. On March 2, 2022, the Health Department announced that the city was in the All Clear Level, which ended the indoor mask mandate in most settings. The COVID Response Levels are not dependent upon vaccination levels in schools or the city, but instead focus on how many people have COVID and how many people are hospitalized with COVID.

The City’s COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard will be updated on March 9, 2022 so that information on pediatric vaccines and boosters for Philadelphians 12 and older will be included. The update will include correction of vaccination percentages which particularly impacts the numbers for 5-11 year-olds.

“We were excited to see a high percentage of Philadelphia youth vaccinated, but we have learned that there was an error in how that percentage was calculated,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole. “No one is more disappointed than we are at this error, but we have corrected it and instituted new measures to ensure that any future problems are caught before they go live. I am happy to see that our pediatric vaccine rate is still higher than the nation’s but this shows us that we still have a great deal of work to do to vaccinate all of our children.”

Throughout the pandemic, jurisdictions across the country have struggled with how to best track cases and vaccine administrations, especially as the data is initially reported to a variety of different jurisdictions who all track datapoints slightly differently. Combining these datasets is a difficult process made more difficult by the lack of a national health system that standardizes data collection and tracking.

The relevant data corrections are as follows:

Age 5-11 

  • Current dashboard: 53.6% 1+ dose
  • Corrected dashboard: 34.2% 1+dose; 26% 2 doses
  • US rates for reference: 33.1% 1+ dose; 26% 2 doses

12+ 

  • Current dashboard: 91.5% 1+ dose; 76% fully vaccinated
  • Corrected dashboard: 93% 1+dose; 75.4% fully vaccinated

18+ 

  • Current dashboard: 95% 1+dose; 82% fully vaccinated
  • Corrected dashboard: 94.3% 1+dose; 76.4% fully vaccinated

For more information on the City’s response to the COVID pandemic, visit  https://www.phila.gov/covid.

The latest data on COVID cases and vaccine administrations can be found at https://www.phila.gov/programs/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/data/.

COVID guidance documents can be found at https://www.phila.gov/programs/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/guidance/guidance-documents/.

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