Recently, the Greene County and Paton-Churdan School Boards decided to continue the school year without implementing a mask mandate.

These decisions came following an injunction by a federal judge that temporarily stopped the new state law that banned school districts from requiring anyone to wear a mask. Greene County Public Health Director Becky Wolf shares her professional opinion about the importance of wearing a mask to mitigate COVID-19.

“We know that masks work, I know there’s a lot of people that don’t feel that they work, but science proves otherwise. The action that was taken through the legislature that banned the (mask) mandates, I don’t think that really did us any favors. I know it’s a difficult situation because it’s a highly politicized topic. But on the other hand, we have been seeing increases ever since early September of cases, including school-aged kids.”

Wolf adds they continue to follow the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which hasn’t recently changed from recommending that people wear a mask, regardless of their vaccination status, when they are indoors with other people and can’t be socially distant.     

According to Wolf, from September 1st through October 4th, there have been 464 new cases of COVID-19 for a countywide total of 1,261. According to the COVID-19 transmission map, Greene County continues to be listed as a high rate.