WA Indoor Mask Mandate Stays For Now, But The End Is Near: Inslee

OLYMPIA, WA — Washington will keep its indoor mask mandate for at least another few weeks, bucking the trend of rolling back such measures, which were recently announced in states such as New York, California and Oregon.

Gov. Jay Inslee hosted a news briefing Wednesday to discuss his plan for altering the state's remaining COVID-19 precautions as the omicron wave declines but said it was still too early to fully remove broad masking requirements for indoor public spaces.

However, the state will remove its mask rules for large outdoor events and end an emergency order restricting non-urgent surgeries by Feb. 18. The governor plans to announce an end date for the indoor mask rules as soon as next week.

"Today is not the day to lift all the masking requirements," Inslee said Wednesday. "We are obviously having conversations and an intensive review of what day it will be and when we can do this. It is no longer a question of if — it is a question of when. I expect to share that date next week with Washingtonians, after we have another week or so of data to give us an even higher level of confidence of where we're going to be sometime in March."

The governor pointed to the nearly uniform trends in countries and states where the omicron variant of the coronavirus peaked earlier, followed by a swift decline in caseloads. While Washington's metrics are improving on both sides of the state, Inslee said case counts and hospitalizations remain high, and a few more weeks could make a big difference.

"We're just coming over the peak and starting down on Feb. 9," Inslee said. "Now we have projections of a very steep decline leading to, we hope, extremely low numbers by the first week of March. Those are projections, they are not absolute certainties."

The governor said his decision would not be "stampeded" by political pressures or the choices of other states, and that ending widespread mask use would only occur when public health guidance deemed it safe to do so.

Related: WA State Superintendent Ready To Remove Student Mask Mandate

"The day is coming, fairly soon, when we don't have a broad mask mandate for indoor public spaces, or for our schools," Inslee said. "We're going to do that by following the science to make the right decision. We don't make decisions based on social internet culture wars over masks. We do not require masks for symbolism. We require them because they work, and now we believe we are in a place to transition to a different state."

Watch the full announcement below: