As states roll back masking requirements for students, a new study shows that masks helped cut Covid-19 infections in public K-12 schools that required them in the fall.
The study comes from a partnership between the US Centers for Disease Control and the Arkansas Department of Health. Investigators looked at Covid-19 infections in Arkansas schools over a period of about seven weeks from August to October 2021, when the Delta variant was the major cause of infections. The study was published Tuesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.Overall, schools that required masks had 23% fewer Covid-19 cases on average than those that didn't.
Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team. Many states had dropped mask mandates in schools, and at the beginning of February, 60% of the nation's 500 largest school districts had mask requirements. Now, that number is just 32%, according to the data company Burbio.com. At one point in the school year, 18 states mandated masks in schools. "As Omicron has become the predominant variant, COVID-19 levels have shifted nationally and CDC no longer recommends universal masking in all schools.