Vermont students can unmask starting March 14, Gov. Phil Scott announced on Thursday.
Scott said students in Vermont schools who want to wear masks will still be allowed to do so and urged against stigmatizing those who continue to feel a mask is necessary for their health and safety.
“They should wear masks if they feel uncomfortable,” he said.
Scott also used his weekly news conference to express his support for Ukraine, as that nation resists the Russian invasion. He announced an executive order building on one pulling Russian products from the shelves of state liquor stores. The new order calls for a review of state purchasing and a removal of any Russian vendors or goods sourced from Russia, severs Vermont’s sister-state arrangement with the Russian territory of Karelia and calls upon Vermont municipalities to break off any sister-town agreements with Russian municipalities.
Scott said the state treasurer’s office also would liquidate any state holdings related to Russia. On top of that, he said when the Legislature reconvenes, he will ask it to immediately allocate $643,077 — $1 per Vermonter — for humanitarian relief to Ukraine and said the state stands ready to accept Ukrainian refugees.
“I know several of those steps are symbolic, but we need to let the people of Ukraine know we’re there for them,” he said.
Dr. Patsy Kelso, the state epidemiologist, said guidance on masking was being updated to reflect decreasing risk from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The decision to mask will be up to each person according to their own circumstances,” she said. “We need to remember a person who wears a mask has their own good reasons to do so and respect that.”
Secretary of Education Dan French noted the state already had relaxed mask mandates for schools with a vaccination rate of at least 80%.
He said this was an incremental step and the result gave the state the confidence to move forward. Scott said he was glad to see the state at the point where masks could come off, especially in schools. “It’s good for students to see their classmates’ faces again,” he said.
Scott also said he was not assuming the pandemic was over. “There’s going to be more variants,” he said. “That’s not even a question. We have tools available. ... We’ll have to react accordingly as we always have.”
Scott said vaccination was the state’s greatest tool against the pandemic.
Jenney Samuelson, the interim secretary of the Agency of Human Services, said the state was shifting from large-scale vaccination sites to smaller ones, but will be able to ramp back up if a new vaccine needs to be distributed.
gordon.dritschilo @rutlandherald.com
