Murphy: K-12 Mask Mandate May Not Need To Be Extended After January

NEW JERSEY — Speaking at his press conference Monday afternoon, Gov. Phil Murphy hinted at a possibility he does not extend the state's K-12 mask mandate once it expires on Jan. 11 — provided cases keep trending downwards and enough New Jersey children are vaccinated by then.

But Murphy stressed that parents shouldn't focus on Jan. 11 as a final date. The governor also said he wants to see where coronavirus cases go as more people are indoors over the coming winter months, and he also wants to see what the holiday season looks like.

"The executive order for mask mandating in schools, just to put a date out there — and I'm not suggesting this is the date folks should focus on, but another data point — is January 11 that expires," said Murphy. "So we would have to volitionally re-up that. But I would hope this is the beginning of a process — I can't tell you exactly when — that we'll be able to get to that place sooner than later."

When asked by a reporter if this was "strong arming" the public into getting their kids vaccinated, Murphy replied: "If you get vaccinated, we'll lift the mandate. I don't view that as strong arming. I view that as factually." Subscribe to Patch: https://patch.com/subscribe

As of Wednesday, the total number of children 5-11 who received a Pfizer pediatric dose is 10,200, about 1 percent of the 760,000 children in that age group. Murphy said he'd like to see all of them vaccinated.

"So we've got a fair ways to go," he pointed out.

There are roughly 650,000 kids in the state ages 12-17: 433,279 of them received at least one dose as of Wednesday, said the Health Department.

Murphy and his administration stressed he'd like to see much higher vaccination numbers in both sets of children before he makes any decision on removing the mask mandate.

"The 5- to 11-year-olds, there's 760,000 5- to 11-year-olds, and we'd like to get all of them vaccinated," said Department of Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli. "The more individuals we get vaccinated, the more the virus has no place to go. Of the 12- to 17-year-olds, we have 260,000 left to get vaccinated. We'd like that to be higher as well."

As Patch previously reported, Murphy also said Monday he could see lifting the school mask mandate "in a phased approach," such as lifting the mask mandate in middle and high schools first.

"In terms of lifting the mask mandate in schools, I could see it as we do it in a phased approach if that number of 12- to 17-year-olds gets into an acceptable zone, which it almost by definition will before the younger kids," said the governor. "You could see making a move, phasing it in, based on the age of the kids, high school versus middle school versus grammar school. That seems to me to be a sensible way to think about this."

The only U.S. states that currently have mandatory school mask mandates are New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and Washington.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced Monday that he will let that state's K-12 mask mandate expire on Jan. 17. Incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat, said Sunday he hopes to end NYC's school mask mandate when he takes office Jan. 1. And New York state Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will lift the statewide mask mandate if coronavirus cases continue to drop after the holidays.

Starting this week, the Pfizer kids' shot was made available at thousands of pediatricians nationwide, pharmacies, state-run vaccine sites and more nationwide.

The CDC strongly recommends that all children in that age group get the COVID vaccine. The federal health agency said it wants to see all of America's 28 million children in this age group get the shot.

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