As Oregon Springs Forward, Masks Come Off at Midnight

If you feel a little disoriented this weekend, perhaps that’s because clocks move forward one hour this Sunday. Or maybe it’s all the bare faces: As of tonight at 11:59 pm, Oregonians will have the choice to go maskless in most indoor spaces, including grocery stores, gyms and offices.

Masks will still be required in hospitals and other health care settings, per the Oregon Health Authority. Same goes for public transit. Private businesses and school districts can independently require masks, too. That’s going to mean a mishmash of policies across the state over the next several weeks.

It’s the first time the state won’t require masks in indoor places since last summer.

“We’ve moved away from statewide regulations and requirements, and returned to the way we controlled communicable disease for more than a century in the state, which is dealing with outbreaks as they occur in narrower geographic areas,” said OHA director Patrick Allen today in a press conference. “That could certainly change if we have a new variant or other circumstances change that create a statewide threat.”

Allen said the state will continue to have a bank of up to 25,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses per day and 130,000 available tests per week, and will continue to regularly test wastewater for detection of case fluctuations and potential new variants.

Portland Public Schools will rescind its mask mandate on March 14.

OHA announced on Feb. 28 it would lift the mask mandate beginning on Saturday, a date that’s been pushed up three times since Gov. Kate Brown first announced the ending of the statewide mask mandate in early February.

Dr. Dean Sidelinger, OHA’s health officer and state epidemiologist, noted that the state’s current seven-day average is the lowest it’s been since July 2021, but that OHA is prepared to handle another variant, if one emerges: “We need to have some of these measure handy, so that we are prepared to implement them.” He said the state’s approach to reinstating restrictions if a new variant emerges would be “a gradual set of recommendations to requirements, depending on what’s in front of us.”

The state’s last day of the indoor mask mandate arrives not 24 hours after a new variant, which some researchers are calling “deltacron,” was detected in the United States and in several European countries. Those cases remain low, however, and health experts say it’s too soon to worry.