Public health officials in Oregon, who recently lifted the state’s outdoor mask mandate, are working to keep a separate set of indoor mask requirements for places such as schools and hospitals in place indefinitely.
Oregon’s first indoor mask mandate was imposed in May 2020 and lifted in June of this year, after the number of COVID-19 cases fell. Gov. Kate Brown, who promised to remove many restrictions once 70 percent of adults received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, nonetheless reinstated the mandate in August, saying at that time that without new interventions, COVID-19 hospitalizations driven by the more transmissible Delta variant would “completely overwhelm” the state’s hospitals.
