IU students looking forward to going back to college this fall will need to bring their masks. Indiana University announced today that it is reinstating an indoor mask mandate at all of its campuses.
According to the university, 85% of the student population is vaccinated, which creates a great safety net to defend against current and emerging COVID-19 strains. The return to campus life will take place as normally as possible. But in order to achieve this, certain measures will be taken in order to do so safely.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week recommended the use of masks indoors even for those who are fully vaccinated. The mask mandate applies to all students, faculty, staff, and guests on IU campuses starting on August 5, 2021.
“We stress that wearing masks indoors is the only thing that is changing, though. And, this mask guideline pertains to indoors only—the weather is beautiful so let’s do everything we can outside,” the university says in a news release.
The school adds that this is a temporary measure: “we will continue to monitor local conditions and will make changes to individual campuses based on local data.”
COVID-19 has seen a resurgence in recent weeks as the more contagious Delta variant continued to sweep the country, particularly in states with lax safety measures in place. States with low vaccination rates – particularly in the South – are the current epicenter of the virus in the United States.
Florida has seen record hospitalizations in recent days along with a record number of new daily COVID-19 cases. That is something that Indiana University would like to avoid seeing happening in the Hoosier State.
