Local academic institutions, courthouses make masks optional following CDC update
Masks will be optional, with some exceptions, for several academic institutions in and around Colorado Springs, as well as in the Fourth Judicial District’s courthouses, per orders and policy updates issued this week.
Most of those changes, officials said, were based on updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which on Friday revamped its metrics for COVID-19 in a community to three levels — low, medium, and high — to indicate the pandemic guidelines that should be followed for a given community.
According to the CDC’s “COVID-19 by County” webpage, El Paso’s COVID-19 community level is medium, while Teller County’s is low.
On Tuesday, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs officials announced the university was updating its COVID-19 mask policy to make face coverings optional indoors and outdoors effective March 7, except for in health care settings or in situations where school contracts require people to wear masks, or while on public transportation.
“This decision stems from the priorities we have held since the beginning of the pandemic,” UCCS Chancellor Venkat Reddy wrote in a release. “Lifting the face covering requirement will allow members of our Mountain Lion community to engage with each other more freely.”
Reddy said the policy update was partially based on Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ Friday statement that the state was shifting toward an endemic response and out of the pandemic phase, adding “fully vaccinated Coloradans can rest assured that you are reasonably safe to live your normal pre-pandemic life.”
The university’s update came one day after Colorado College made a similar announcement to its community, making masks optional on campus effective Tuesday, adding the college would continue “regular screening testing of students.”
The United States Air Force Academy on Tuesday also announced that fully vaccinated guests would no longer be required to wear masks inside athletic venues effective immediately, adding in an email the policy was changed “to adhere to current El Paso County indoor guidelines where masks are not required.” The academy did not cite the updated CDC guidelines in its email to The Gazette.
In an order released Monday, Fourth Judicial District Judge William Bain dropped the mask requirements previously in place for the El Paso and Teller county courthouses, partially citing lower numbers of new local cases.
“After I confirmed that all of the local COVID data (especially the very low number of new cases and hospitalizations), I decided that the mask mandate was no longer required in the two courthouses in the (Fourth Judicial District),” Bain wrote in an emailed statement to The Gazette.
Bain said the delay in dropping the mask order in the courthouses, which came well after the state mask order was ended in most settings around summer last year, was part of the judicial district’s “obligation to keep everyone safe at the courthouse” because most of the people who go to court “are required to come here,” unlike at stores and restaurants.
El Paso County residents have seen roughly 226 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks, and in Teller County, there’ve been 113 new cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks, per Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment data on Tuesday.
Per the CDC’s updated community levels, only people in counties with a high community level are recommended to wear masks indoors.
The statue of Charles Leaming Tutt Jr. wears a protective mask in May 2020 outside the library on Colorado College that bears his name. The college on Monday, Feb. 28, 2022, announced masks as optional on campus, effective March 1.
Masks are no longer required in the El Paso or Teller county courthouses, effective March 2, 2022, per an order from Fourth Judicial District Chief Judge William Bain (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)