Ann Arbor Public Schools became Michigan’s first district to impose an indoor sports mask mandate for the upcoming fall high school season, but the prospect of statewide changes has yet to emerge on the radar of the state’s prep sports governing body.
Michigan High School Athletic Association communications director Geoff Kimmerly said his office has not heard anything from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services as of Monday afternoon, when AAPS confirmed with MLive that its district-wide indoor mask mandate will extend to prep volleyball and swimming – the state’s two indoor sports for the fall season.
“We have not heard anything from MDHHS about any restrictions or anything yet,” Kimmerly said.
“If a local school district or a local health department wants to make that rule, then they’re entitled to do so, and schools that would go to play there would have to follow it,” he added.
AAPS announced Friday that students, staff and visitors must wear facemasks when inside the district’s buildings for the coming school year amid rising COVID-19 cases nationally and recent recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, both of which recommended universal indoor masking inside K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.
“A simple step – wearing our masks while indoors – provides another layer of protection to improve overall health and safety and mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in our schools and community this fall,” AAPS Superintendent Jeanice Swift said. “In maintaining our attention to two key strategies, vaccination and universal masking indoors, we can all feel more comfortable and confident that we are doing our part to keep our schools healthy and safe, particularly for those children under age 12 who are not yet able to receive vaccination.”
RELATED: Masks required for students, staff, visitors inside all Ann Arbor schools this fall
In addition to the CDC’s K-12 mask recommendation, the organization also released guidelines last week urging indoor mask usage in U.S. counties with daily COVID-19 case rates above 50 per week per 100,000 people or COVID-19 test positivity rates above 8 percent.
As of Aug. 2, 31 of Michigan’s 83 counties have case rates or test-positivity rates above those thresholds.
In Michigan, COVID-19 cases have also been rising since early July, with the seven-day average of daily cases at 683 as of Aug. 2, though the state’s seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths has remained in the single digits for the past month.
The national seven-day average for daily COVID-19 cases has climbed steadily since mid-June and is at 85,866 as of Aug. 2.
COVID-19 deaths have been increasing at a much slower rate, with the seven-day average at 388 almost a month after seeing that number drop to 188 in early July, which marked the nation’s lowest seven-day average since late March 2020.
Kimmerly said the MHSAA has been paying attention to the pandemic since its onset, but indicated it’s unlikely his organization will impose a mask requirement for indoor sports absent a mandate from the MDHHS.
“We’ve paid attention going back to the beginning of this, but you have to remember all of the restrictions that have ever come out are from MDHHS,” he said. “We help schools understand them and put them into play, but all of those things come from MDHHS. Those decisions have not been decisions made by our office.
“I’m sure that if you call down there, they are probably paying attention to that stuff a lot more. Maybe not a lot more, but in the same detail and with a different eye to things because, obviously, they’re coming from a full-community medical eye, whereas we’re looking at things with the expertise that we have. We’re not doctors or scientists, per se, but of course we pay attention, but we’re not the ones that put these restrictions in place; we’re not the ones that make the rules. The people that are paying attention that are more important in those ways are certainly down by the Capitol.”
With Michigan’s fall high school season set to begin with the first set of practices on Aug. 9, Kimmerly said his organization is preparing for a return to normalcy.
“We’re planning on starting on the dates we would normally start on; we’re planning on doing the things that we would normally do, and, obviously, that doesn’t mean that we are not paying attention to the fact that there are still cases out there and that there are numbers rising in certain places across our country and things of that nature, but, certainly, it feels different because we’re intending on going into everything with more of a normal schedule and a normal set of procedures,” he said.
Also on MLive.com
31 Michigan counties should be masking, regardless of vaccination status, per CDC data
Central Michigan University will require masks through at least September
COVID cluster at Rebel Road, Muskegon Bike Time prompts warning for attendees to get tested
Grand Valley State working with health officials to test, detect genetic markers of COVID-19 in wastewater
8 Michigan colleges now mandating COVID-19 vaccination before start of fall classes
