Dennis Hogan of Charleston, S.C., responds to a question on the ending of Nevadas mask mandate Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Governor Steve Sisolak announced the end of the indoor mask mandate during a news conference Thursday morning. Hogan said he plans to keep learning his mask until he gets home.
Friday, Feb. 11, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Even though Gov. Steve Sisolak lifted Nevada’s mask mandate Thursday, the governor and state and national health experts continue to point out the fight against COVID-19 is far from over.
“I want to be clear, the emergency is not over,” Sisolak said in a news conference after his announcement. “The pandemic is not over. We’re still getting far too many cases, far too many hospitalizations and far too many deaths.”
The Southern Nevada Health District continues to urge residents to be vigilant against COVID through mask-wearing, vaccinations — including boosters if eligible — and staying home if sick.
“While there is no longer a mask mandate in place, masks are proven to be effective at protecting people and lowering the risk of disease transmission,” the health district said in a statement. “We encourage people to wear well-fitting masks in public indoor spaces for additional protection while disease transmission is high, especially if they are unvaccinated or more at-risk for severe illness from COVID-19.”
Masks will no longer be required in public places, including schools and prisons, Sisolak said. They are still required, however, in some high-risk settings, such as hospitals and nursing homes, he said.
In making his announcement, Sisolak cited a decline in overall COVID cases, hospitalizations and the amount of virus detected during wastewater testing. At the height of the omicron variant surge on Jan. 10, Nevada recorded 7,865 new cases; that number has declined to about 1,280 in recent days.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll continue that downward trend,” Sisolak said. “I’m hopeful that this will not cause an increase in hospitalizations as we move forward.”
Brian Labus, the UNLV epidemiologist who is a member of Sisolak’s medical advisory committee, said lifting the mandate didn’t change the need for people to wear masks. Labus said Sisolak did not directly conference with the advisory committee before lifting the mandate but instead drew on the committees’ past recommendations throughout the pandemic.
“Really the question is, ‘What’s that next variant? What are the major changes in behavior that are going to happen?’ ” Labus said. “Those are the things that really drive the overall transmission. Masks are just one part of the equation, and changing the mask use won’t change everything overnight.”
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask guidance has not been updated since Jan. 21. It still recommends everyone wear a mask indoors if they are in an area of substantial or high transmission.
Marc Kahn, dean of UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, said the decision to remove the mask mandate in Clark County School District schools is complicated because children are not uniformly vaccinated against COVID-19. However, because the omicron variant of the virus is so transmissible, he said kids might already have been exposed to the disease and therefore have some immunity.
“There’s this sort of tension between practicality and science,” Kahn said. “In the schools, there’s probably already a high exposure rate, which means a high level of immunity.”
CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that the organization continued to endorse “universal masking in schools.” She continues to back the CDC’s mask recommendations in other public spaces as case numbers and hospitalizations remain high nationwide. Additionally, the CDC recommends everyone 5 years and older receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Sisolak asked residents to be respectful of businesses they frequent that will continue requiring patrons to wear a mask. While the mandate is lifted, individual businesses can still require facial covering.
“There will be times going forward where I will still wear a mask because I want to protect my fellow Nevadans,” Sisolak said. “We’re not through this pandemic. We’re still fighting it every single day. But I think we’re taking another step forward.”
Edwin Oh, associate professor in the UNLV medical school, said that while the state’s and county’s COVID-19 cases were indicating a downward trend, work still needed to be done to curb the virus entirely.
Oh directs the wastewater surveillance program at UNLV, which tracks COVID-19 in the county through wastewater and sewage. Moving forward, he said the program would monitor for the seemingly more transmissible variant “stealth omicron.”
“The mask mandate throws a little bit of a new variable into some of our calculations,” Oh said. “With this last mandate being lifted, we have to now pay even more attention and be even more vigilant about what’s going on.”
Oh said he was also concerned the dropped mandate would bring a subsequent increase in COVID-19 cases in CCSD schools, another reason he thinks the wastewater testing approach will be even more imperative to fighting the virus moving forward.
“We want to be in a position to identify, really, the more vulnerable communities that are going to suffer from some of these changes, at least in the short term, so that we can figure out how we can deploy the right public health resources where we need it the most,” he said.
Labus projects that only about half of people in indoor spaces will continue to wear a mask.
Khan said that mask-wearing will be shaped around one’s personal comfort but that people who elect to wear masks should choose high-quality varieties, like N-95s or KN-95s. Doing so, even if nearby people are unmasked, will decrease the person’s risk of getting sick.
“If you’re immunocompromised, you need to wear a mask, and if you’re unvaccinated, you are taking a serious risk for being in a crowded space without a mask,” he said. “I’ll tell you, if I were going to a concert right now — I’ve been triple vaccinated — I would wear a mask.”
