Pittsburgh Public Schools was one of the last districts in our area to still require masks, but that changed with a vote at last night's school board meeting.
According to the CDC, Allegheny County is at a low community level for COVID-19, which considers transmission rates and hospitalizations.
Some board members, like Gene Walker, are content to defer to medical experts for administrative decisions.
"The COVID team, Allegheny Health, State Police and the CDC, are we going to continue to micro-manage this to death and make sure nothing ever happens?"
Others like Pam Harbin disagrees.
"I do think the CDC has downplayed the case counts, because they are more interested in hospitalizations. I don't think we can downplay case counts," she said.
She cited a model she recently saw on social media.
"There's an epidemiologist on my Twitter and Facebook, who did a model of the whole country right now."
In the end, the school board, voted to make masks optional off for now, but they'll have to go back on if our area reaches a community level of medium, which is more restrictive than CDC recommendations.
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