District-Level Universal Masking Policies and COVID-19 Incidence During the First 8 Weeks of School in Texas.

Texas discontinued state-sponsored business restrictions and mask mandates on March 10, 2021, and mandated that no government officials, including public school officials, may implement mask requirements even in areas where COVID-19 hospitalizations comprised more than 15% of hospitalizations. Nonetheless, some public school districts began the 2021-2022 school year with mask mandates in place. We used quasi-experimental methods to analyze the impact of school mask mandates, which appear to have resulted in approximately 40 fewer student cases per week in the first eight weeks of school. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(6):871-875. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306769).