Peabody Board Of Health To Review City Coronavirus Data Thursday

PEABODY, MA — The Peabody Board of Health will meet on Thursday to review the most recent coronavirus data and current masking requirements and recommendations for the city.

When the Board of Health met in August it recommended Peabody enact an indoor mask order both for Peabody Public Schools and for municipal buildings. While it made a strong recommendation that businesses put in their own individual mask mandates voluntarily, Health Director Sharon Cameron told Patch the city would not be enforcing that order on businesses at that time.

Since then, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued a universal public school indoor mask mandate regardless of vaccination status through at least Oct. 1. That order came the day the Peabody School Committee was to vote on whether to make school masks voluntary among vaccinated staff and students or mandatory.

"The decision made today by the Department of Elementary and Second Education — DESE — took away our local authority, took away our ability to vote on this," Mayor Ted Bettencourt, who is also School Committee Chair, said at that meeting. "I think we know our city as well, if not better, than anybody."

Cameron said the city did enact the mask order indoors at municipal buildings effective Sept. 7 — although there does not appear to be any reference to that order on the city's official website or its social media feed.

With the state order on schools set to expire next week, Cameron told Patch universal masking indoors should remain in all Peabody Public Schools.

"Given the significant number of cases in our community at this point, many of which are among school-age children, I believe that masking continues to be an important strategy to minimize disruption to in-person learning opportunities for Peabody students," she said Wednesday.

According to the most recent Peabody data published on Sept. 13, the city had 244 new coronavirus cases identified over the previous 14 days with a 4.05 percent positive-test rate and 29.7 cases per 100,000 residents.

That is well above the statewide average, which has fallen in recent weeks from a 2.84 positive rate in August to 2.1 as of Tuesday.

The city said as of Sept. 13 that 69 percent of its residents were fully vaccinated, with 64 percent receiving at least one dose. The DESE guidelines released in late August said the trigger for optional masking in schools is 80 percent of all students and staff in that building.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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