State House News Service

Author: Chris Lisinski

Expiration Gives Locals Authority on Masking Decisions

The Baker administration will allow a statewide K-12 schools mask mandate to expire at the end of the month, a major shift that returns decisions about masks in classrooms to the local level as the COVID-19 pandemic approaches the two-year mark.

Drawing concern from the head of the state’s largest teachers union and criticism from some Democrats, Gov. Charlie Baker and Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeff Riley announced Wednesday that they will allow the existing requirement to expire on Feb. 28.

In its place, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will issue a non-binding recommendation for mask use in certain situations, such as when a student returns after testing positive for the coronavirus.

The Department of Early Education and Care will also update its guidance to reflect a similar change, Baker said.

School districts can still choose to impose their own local mandates, and Baker said the administration will “fully support” anyone who chooses to mask up once the mandate lifts. But when kids and teachers head back to the classroom after February vacation, they will no longer be subject to a state-issued mandate to cover their faces.

Baker said the improving COVID-19 outlook, with cases steadily declining in recent weeks after an omicron-fueled spike, and the availability of vaccines, tests and treatments have moved Massachusetts to a point where loosening the restriction is appropriate.

“Our kids have had to put up with a lot of disruption, a lot of time alone, and have suffered a real learning loss over the past two years,” Baker said. “Given the extremely low risk for young people, the widespread availability and the proven effectiveness of vaccines, and the distribution of accurate test protocols and tests, it’s time to give our kids a sense of normalcy.”

Masks will remain required on school buses after the in-building mandate expires in accordance with federal rules, Riley said. School testing programs the state has supported will also remain in place to continue monitoring for possible COVID-19 cases.

As of Feb. 1, 82 percent of Bay Staters between the ages of 16 and 19, 83 percent of those between the ages of 12 and 15, and 51 percent of kids between the ages of 5 and 11 had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Department of Public Health data.

Children younger than five remain ineligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines.

“Massachusetts actually ranks second in the nation for its highest share of kids fully vaccinated at this point in time,” Baker said.

The announcement drew criticism from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which argued that the strong statewide youth vaccination numbers gloss over large disparities between wealthier, whiter districts and districts with more low-income families or students of color.

“Educators really want to return as much to normalcy as possible, but to do it safely, we can’t throw caution to the wind at this very moment and drop the mask mandate on the day students return from February vacation,” MTA President Merrie Najimy told the News Service. “We’ve had enough experience with school vacations to be able to anticipate a likely surge upon return. The CDC hasn’t changed their guidance yet, so we think it’s more prudent to wait until perhaps early or mid-March, assess the data, and then make a decision.”

The administration first imposed its school mask mandate in August and has extended it three times since.

Under the existing policy, schools with a combined student and staff vaccination rate of at least 80 percent can ask for state permission to lift the mask mandate — for both vaccinated and unvaccinated students — within their walls.

Riley said Tuesday that 68 schools applied for a waiver from the mandate. Forty-two received waivers, and decisions are still pending on another 21 schools.

“We’re obviously not going to take any more waivers in due to this announcement,” Riley said.

COVID-19 has created headaches or outright upheaval in three different academic years, and Riley said the administration believes removing the mask mandate will “make it easier for students to learn,” particularly for young readers and students for whom English is not a first language.

The Feb. 28 mandate expiration falls on the first day back from February vacation for many schools. Riley said the state will continue to make at-home tests available before the end of that time off to “cull out any positive cases” as it did following the winter break.

“We think that will be an effective measure going forward,” he said.

Lawmakers sent Baker a $101 million spending bill that targets additional investments in masks and rapid tests for schools, among other areas. Baker said Monday he intends to sign the bill this week.

Baker and Riley said they opted to announce the impending policy change with two and a half weeks of advance notice to give local leaders time to make any additional decisions necessary.

They did not attach any specific public health metrics to the masking decision or outline data thresholds, such as an average positive test rate, that would trigger automatic reinstatement of the mask mandate.

“I don’t want to get into hypotheticals on this,” Baker said. “What I can tell you is we meet on a regular basis with a group of infectious disease experts and so does DESE. We’re constantly talking to them about the latest updates, information and guidance.”

Over the next few months, Baker said the state will also gain access to “a lot more therapeutics available that will be much easier to use.”

“There’s a lot of pieces, and you can’t just focus on any one of them, which is one of the reasons why we spent a lot of time talking to people who are in the field and in the space,” he said.

A handful of Democrats in the Legislature took aim at the announcement. Sen. Becca Rausch of Needham noted that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics “still recommend universal indoor school masking,” while Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, who is running for governor, said the shift “does not reflect the reality of our situation.”

“While Massachusetts cases are, thankfully, declining from our unprecedented spike last month, our numbers are not low,” Chang-Diaz said. “Community transmission rates are still ranking as ‘high’ in every county of the Commonwealth, our hospitalization rates are still as high as they were near the end of December, and the CDC still recommends universal masking for our students.”

Najimy said the teachers union will continue to advocate before local officials to attach defined metrics to school masking plans and push for more spending on upgrading school ventilation systems, which could help limit the spread of the virus.

American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts President Beth Kontos said COVID-19 “remains a serious threat in dozens of Massachusetts school districts where vaccine rates for children ages 5 to 11 are dangerously low.”

“We expect many of those districts to maintain their in-school mask mandates,” Kontos said. “And we again call on the Baker administration to conduct comprehensive in-school vaccination programs, particularly in poorer, urban communities that have been devastated by the pandemic. It will be a challenge, but the Governor cannot walk away from our youngest students at this critical time.”

The administration’s decision comes as leaders in several other states roll back COVID-19 restrictions. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced the state’s school mask mandate will lift on March 7. In Delaware, Gov. John Carney said a requirement to mask up in schools will expire on March 31.

Carney will also lift his state’s universal indoor mask mandate on Feb. 11, while New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday she would allow an indoor masking requirement to expire Thursday.

For more than a year, Bay Staters have not been subject to a state-issued order to wear masks in many indoor public settings other than schools. Baker first advised residents to mask up on April 10, 2020, then converted the advisory to a mandate on May 1, 2020. That policy remained in place until May 2021, when the mandate relaxed.

Masks are still required in some settings, including transportation, health care facilities and congregate care.

Baker indicated he is not considering changes on that front, stressing the administration’s focus is on “areas that involve vulnerable populations.”

Some cities and towns that had indoor mask mandates such as Salem, Lowell and Worcester have recently moved to lift those requirements.

Stricter policies remain in place in other Massachusetts municipalities, including Boston, where patrons must show proof of vaccine to get into restaurants, indoor entertainment venues and fitness centers.

“We’ve said since the beginning of this pandemic that we’re going to do the best we can to establish what we consider to be statewide frameworks, and if communities want to go beyond what we do, that’s their call,” Baker said.

Mayor Michelle Wu on Tuesday said the city will lift its proof-of-vaccination requirement when fewer than 95 percent of intensive care beds are occupied, fewer than 200 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 per day, and the average community positivity rate falls below 5 percent.

You’ve probably heard that content is king multiple times already, and you’re almost getting tired of hearing it. But with consumer demand for custom content continually increasing, you must get your content in order if you want to reap the right benefit. Statistics from SEMrush show that more than 80% of companies have a content marketing strategy. Moreover, most of your site visitors only end up there after looking at some specific details they need. Therefore, you have to get your content marketing right to boost your traffic and increase conversions.

Unfortunately, even with content marketing being a critical aspect in any enterprise, research shows that only 32% of marketers consider themselves effective at it. We have come up with four critical things in content marketing that will help you improve your strategy. Keep reading for more insights.

You Need a Strategy for Content Marketing to Work

Content marketing isn’t just about writing and doing more writing and waiting for the desired results. You’ll have to take your time and think about what your content strategy should be before you write your first post. Also, you have to know your target audience, the message that will resonate with them, and the added value of your products or services. If you don’t know who you want to attract to your site and what they expect from you, there are fewer chances of turning your traffic into conversions.

Regular Blogging Can Increase Your Traffic Up to Five Times

About 89% of marketers used blog posts as part of their content marketing strategy in 2020 to build more brand awareness. However, if you think that having a blog and updating it from time to time will deliver success in your content marketing strategy, think again. You have to be consistent in blogging to increase traffic to your website. Your audience love to go through interesting blogs and active ones too. Post to your blog at least 16 times a month while still maintaining the highest quality in each piece for better results. Besides, this is a clever way of showing your audience that your company is active since you’ll always have something to show and tell your clients.

Which Social Media Platform is Best for Your Content?

We can all agree that technology and the internet keep evolving at a very high rate. Also, today’s audience, especially the young generation, keeps switching from one platform to another. You will find that millennials love Instagram, salespeople like LinkedIn, and we know that most of our Chamber members are active users of Facebook and/or Twitter. Therefore, you need to do in-depth research to understand your target audience to have an effective content marketing strategy. When you have the right information about your target audience, you will know the social media platform to focus on when creating content.

Contrary to what social media experts might tell you, there is a single platform that is best for your content: your blog. Google will crawl and index your content more frequently if you have a blog and use it to post your most timely content. After posting your content to your blog, post to your social sites as outposts that engage your audience and lead to better relationships.

Content Marketing is a Daily Task

Content marketing isn’t a one-time thing or something you can do once a week or a month. This is especially true when you are sharing your content on social media. You will need to constantly supervise your content, even past the usual working hours and during the weekends. This is because you don’t want a negative comment attracting many eyes, especially those who haven’t used your products or services. Also, keeping in mind that your site is accessible from any part of the globe, you don’t know when someone will read your post.

Marketing experts say content marketing is a core factor of any good marketing strategy. By taking into account the above details, you will see significant improvements in your content marketing plan. Don’t just embrace it because every marketer does it but do it right to get the right outcomes.

Author: Colin A. Young

Source: State House News Service

White House: Inflation Too High, But Moving In Right Direction

For businesses and consumers across New England, almost everything is more expensive right now and that dynamic has wide-reaching ripple effects that turn up in reports the Federal Reserve compiles from banking and business contacts.

“Retailers raised their prices somewhat in recent months in response to rising input costs and robust demand, although one experienced some consumer pushback after its latest price move,” the Fed wrote in the latest Beige Book, which summarizes recent business activity in New England and around the country.

For the companies that manufacture goods, there have been “intense input pricing pressures, with increases as high as 30 percent over the year,” especially for materials like foam, steel, aluminum, wood, cornstarch, adhesives and cardboard, the Fed reported. Some New England manufacturers have significantly raised the prices of their final goods to compensate, but the Fed said at least one of its sources “said it was trying not to raise prices.”

Down the line, retailers selling those goods are facing freight and shipping costs that have “stabilized at very high levels” and contributed further to moderately higher prices for consumers, but reports from retail contacts were “mostly positive” in the last month, the Fed said.

“A clothing retailer enjoyed a robust seasonal surge in sales above its already-strong performance in the first 3 quarters of the year, as recent sales exceeded comparable 2020 levels by low double-digit percentages,” the Beige Book’s New England report said. “A furniture seller saw revenue above pre-pandemic levels, but its sales volume dropped in recent months relative to the record-setting levels posted in the summer of 2021.”

That prices have been rising comes as no surprise to consumers. The pocketbook pressure was quantified Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported that the U.S. Consumer Price Index increased 7 percent over the last year — the steepest climb in prices since 1982.

White House officials said Wednesday that inflation is “still too high, but moving in the right direction,” citing a month-to-month deceleration.

“I would note that we saw, in prices from November to December, a decline in the rate of growth of the prices for food at home, which is a technical way of saying food that people buy in the grocery store. And we saw a drop in the price of energy, both at the gas pump but also natural gas and winter heating costs,” National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said, according to a White House transcript. “And many of you focused on the annual 7 percent rate. If we are trying to look at where we are headed, the month-to-month changes are more instructive.”

On Thursday, Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse highlighted that a separate measure, the Producer Price Index showed “a slowdown in producer price increases in December, relative to the month before, and the lowest monthly increase … since November 2020.”

A tight labor market has contributed to the stress on businesses and consumers, though an economics and policy researcher told Massachusetts officials Wednesday that the jobs picture here has “improved significantly over the last year and a half to two years” but remains about 172,400 jobs short of pre-pandemic highs.

“We’re still below peak on our 2020 job numbers, but we’re approaching that and hopefully we would see full recovery at least later this year or early in 2023,” Mark Melnik, the UMass Donahue Institute’s director of economic and public policy research, said during an economic overview hosted by MassEcon.

The Fed largely backed up Melnik in the Beige Book, saying that a few of the firms it contacted “described moderate-to-aggressive hiring plans” for 2022, though at least one said it intended to shed workers this year.

Despite concerns that they would lead to a mass exodus from the workforce, the Fed said it has seen no evidence that vaccine mandates led to more people quitting their jobs in New England.

“Three contacts from diverse sectors said that it had recently become easier to hire workers, while others reported that hiring remained difficult but had not deteriorated. Elevated turnover remained a problem for several firms, but one noted that vaccine mandates had not resulted in increased quits. Wages posted strong gains on average, with year-over-year raises ranging from only slight to a robust 10 percent.”

Today the Baker-Polito Administration announced an order was placed with iHealth to supply the state with 26 million rapid antigen tests over the next 3 months. The tests will be prioritized to support K-12 schools and childcare settings. The agreement allows for shipments of tests to arrive on a rolling basis in the Commonwealth, but the Administration warns that the timing and shipment amounts will vary depending on international shipping and production variables.

The Baker-Polito Administration also released a public health advisory this week to advise all residents on when to seek tests for COVID-19. The advisory advises all residents to seek COVID-19 tests when exhibiting COVID symptoms, or five days following a known close contact with someone diagnosed with COVID pursuant to MA DPH quarantine and isolation protocols, updated as of December 29 in accordance with the new CDC guidance.

The new isolation protocols do not require a COVID-19 test to exit isolation after having COVID. This general rule also applies to childcare and K-12.  Additional information on testing protocols for specific situations in childcare can be found here and for K-12 can be found here.

The new quarantine protocols recommend, but do not require, all exposed individuals get a test five days after exposure.  Exposed individuals do not need to quarantine in the following circumstances:

• If fully vaccinated and not yet eligible to receive a booster OR
• If fully vaccinated and have received their booster OR
• If they had COVID and it is less than 90 days since they were diagnosed.  For more details visit here.

DPH advises that a positive COVID-19 rapid antigen does not need to be confirmed with a PCR test.

DPH recommends individuals that have COVID symptoms and test negative with a rapid antigen test should isolate and either repeat an antigen test or get a PCR test in 24-48 hours if they continue to exhibit symptoms. Additionally, DPH does not advise employers, or schools and childcare, to require a test as a condition of returning to work or school.

View the public health advisory here.

Vaccination and getting a booster remain the best possible protection against COVID. There are almost 1,000 locations in the Commonwealth for residents to receive a COVID-19 vaccine or booster. Visit VaxFinder.mass.gov to book an appointment.

Massachusetts National Guard

Governor Baker also today activated 500 additional members of the Massachusetts National Guard to support the state’s health care system. This order expands the National Guard activation of 500 members announced on December 21 to support non-clinical functions in the Commonwealth’s hospitals. Prioritized uses for the newly activated 500 members will be to provide additional non-clinical staffing at community hospitals and high-volume emergency departments, public hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and dialysis centers. These guard personnel will be deployed beginning the week of January 17.