Mask mandates were extended for U.S. transit, but dropped in many other settings: The week in Covid news.

In an aggressive step towards normalcy, public college college students in New York Metropolis returned to mask-optional school rooms on Monday for the primary time because the begin of the pandemic.

In Puerto Rico, the governor lifted the territory’s masks mandate for many locations, as one of many final holdouts in america to ease Covid-19 restrictions. Hawaii adopted swimsuit on Tuesday, turning into the fiftieth and ultimate state to announce that it might drop its common indoor masks mandate because the nation tries to maneuver on from the as soon as ferocious Omicron wave.

However eradicating masks continues to be contested in some locations. The Chicago academics’ union vowed to battle plans to elevate a masks mandate within the nation’s third-largest college district and one younger New Yorker instructed reporters he felt unsafe and not using a masks on in school.

On Thursday, the Transportation Safety Administration introduced it’ll lengthen its masks mandate for airplanes and different public transportation by mid-April, because the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention mentioned it might work with federal businesses to revise masks insurance policies.

The requirement will stay in place at the very least by April 18. Beneath the T.S.A.’s rule, passengers on airplanes, buses and trains and at airports and transit stations should put on masks.

However the comparatively brief extension signaled that the federal authorities could also be making ready to wind down the requirement, at the very least in some locations. The C.D.C. was consulting different federal businesses to find out when masks ought to be required on public transit, making an allowance for case counts and the dangers of latest variants, amongst different elements.

Right here’s what else occurred this week:

• The as soon as intense Omicron wave that has retreated in a lot of the world is flaring up in components of East and Southeast Asia. Some international locations are enduring their worst waves of the pandemic, the World Well being Group famous this week.

• Ukraine’s well being care system continues to be grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, even because it tries to deal with the extreme results of an invasion that has sown destruction and dislocation within the nation, the W.H.O.’s regional director for Europe mentioned on Tuesday. Ukraine reported 731 Covid deaths to the group final week, a determine that in all probability underestimates the true toll.

• 13 Democratic state governors wrote to the Well being and Human Companies secretary, Xavier Becerra, this week, urging him to increase the nation’s public well being emergency declaration for at the very least one other three months past its scheduled expiration in April. The governors mentioned that they want way more time to organize.

• Novak Djokovic, one of many world’s most outstanding sports activities stars to carry out towards getting a coronavirus vaccination, mentioned Wednesday that he can’t enter america as a result of he’s unvaccinated and received’t take part within the Indian Wells tennis event that started this week and runs by subsequent weekend in Southern California.

• Officers in Ontario, Canada, mentioned on Wednesday that the province was dropping its common masks mandate, weeks after truckers paralyzed Ottawa, the nation’s capital, throughout protests over coronavirus restrictions.