The Board of Health modified the “exit ramp” to the town’s indoor mask mandate Monday, but any impact won’t be realized for at least a month.
The criterion for relaxation had been two weeks of “moderate” Covid-19 risk throughout Middlesex County. That threshold is 50 cases per 100,000, an indicator established by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Board Member Ann Kiessling, contending that the “moderate” indicator will never be achieved, called for using “substantial” risk as the cutoff point. That number tops at 99 per 100,000. The rest of the board concurred, but the change is effective only after four consecutive weeks at that level.
Kiessling initially moved to rescind the mandate entirely, but that motion failed 3-1 (member Anita Raj was absent).
She repeated her assertion that there is no rationale behind the CDC thresholds. “Who decided that 100 cases are ‘high?’ There is no justification for how those categories were arrived at. They just came out of the blue.” She said her research on the source has hit a dead end. “It’s very arbitrary, which explains a lot of what the CDC is doing right now.”
“I really think that for us to hang on to get to the ‘moderate’ level is unreasonable. The country is never going to get there,” Kiessling asserted.
Heidi Porter, Director of Health and Human Services, noted that the “moderate” level would reflect a county caseload of no more than 805. “That hasn’t happened except for three weeks last summer when not very much testing was done,” Kiessling said.
She called for dropping the mandate because of positive community data, including high vaccination rate. “No one has been hospitalized or died for at least six months. We are putting masks on vaccinated people to protect other vaccinated people.”
Kiessling said the positivity percentage in Bedford is the same as in Concord and Burlington, where there are no mandates. The requirement “is having no effect on transmission,” she contended. “It seems as though Bedford has some kind of bigger problem than those communities — and we don’t.”
Other board members pushed back. “There are still populations who are not vaccinated,” said Bea Brunkhorst. Now more activity will be taking place indoors, she added. Maureen Richichi observed, “We are being cautious and protective. We still have vulnerable populations. And we have waning immunity going on.”
“This is going to be a seasonal disease,” Kiessling said. “We are done with this. Bedford doesn’t have a pandemic anymore.” But Richichi replied, “I don’t think we are at the endemic point yet.” Susan Schwartz added, “The trouble is we are not on an island. We have people coming in from all different communities.” Kiessling said there is little transmission rate difference among towns.
“People with immunity are getting infected. They are just not getting sick,” Kiessling said. “We are going to get this virus every winter, like the flu.”
Brunkhorst said she is still concerned about spreading the virus to those unvaccinated. Masks, Richichi said, also “keep people aware and focused. The point of the mandate was to do everything we could with all mitigation steps to get us through this delta period.”
Board members agreed with Kiessling’s premise that the CDC indicators are arbitrary, and that once the risk is below “high,” the mandate could be rescinded. But they insisted on four consecutive weeks of evidence. “We want to be confident that that’s the way we’re trending,” Richichi said. “We want to be proactive, not reactive. We want to see the trends,” explained Brunkhorst. Schwartz added that it would be best to ensure that there aren’t “fluctuations.”
Kiessling didn’t see the point of delaying – if the rate returns too “high,” the mandate can be restored, she said. Kiessling also challenged the importance of the concept of case counts. “Case is not sickness. Case is just a positive test. We haven’t had anyone sick in Bedford for weeks. And that’s a huge difference.” Richichi said there may be people suffering from Covid-19 in their homes. The board should prioritize ensuring that children stay healthy. In schools, “We need to keep things operational.”
Kiessling made the original motion with a two-week wait time but ended up supporting the longer interval, which was approved unanimously.
The board also amended the language of the mandate so that the schools would be in alignment with the policies of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. However, non-school activities in school buildings remain subject to the local requirements. The text also says private schools must follow the American Association of Pediatrics face-covering guidelines.
Porter told the board that Covid-19 cases in Bedford over the most recent two-week period totaled 25, an increase from 19 from the previous reporting period. Over the past week, she said, there were 10 new cases, four of them in one household.
Through last week, there were a cumulative 27 cases of students with only two of them currently active. She said there are no residents hospitalized “that we know of,” and the VA Medical Center has no inpatients who are positive for the virus.
Mike Rosenberg can be reached at [email protected], or 781-983-1763
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