As new COVID-19 cases have continued to drop in Douglas County, commissioners on Wednesday evening were set to let a countywide mask mandate expire. An emergency health order with a countywide mask mandate went into effect Jan. 7 as the county was seeing a rolling 14-day average of new cases nearly double previous pandemic spikes. That number eventually reached more than four times the previous records from November 2020, but new cases began to drop within two weeks of the mandate going into effect. Early last month, the commission had considered an option of a loosened mandate that would have required masks only for indoor gatherings where more than 500 people were present. Instead, they opted to extend the mandate until Wednesday, March 2.
Source: The Lawrence Times
