Hill leaders are retiring their workplace masking policies, making masks optional throughout the Capitol complex ahead of Congress’ return to Washington this week and Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
The Capitol’s Attending Physician Dr. Brian P. Monahan announced Sunday that the rate of positive tests at the Capitol’s testing site is down to 2.7 percent over the last two weeks, below the current rates for Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia. The Office of the Attending Physician has adopted the CDC’s new model for monitoring community levels and is adapting to the "green" status of the Washington, D.C. region, Monahan said, meaning it's considered a low transmission area.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi controls masking rules on the House floor, but she has largely deferred to Monahan's recommendations. The Senate never adopted mask mandates, citing high vaccination rates, though individual offices set their own policies.
The transition away from masks follows Democrats’ shifting rhetoric on entering a new phase of the pandemic, plus fresh recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued Friday.
The Capitol's walk-in testing site for employees will continue operating, according to Monahan’s memo. But the distribution of at-home testing kits that started during the surge of the Omicron variant will be paused starting March 7, only to resume if cases rise once again.
According to the Office of the Attending Physician, 89 percent of coronavirus infections at the Capitol in the last two weeks occurred in vaccinated individuals. About 63 percent of cases were symptomatic, with 37 percent detected in asymptomatic employees.
As governors around the country rolled back pandemic restrictions, some vulnerable Democratic lawmakers had asked for a retooling of the Biden administration’s handling of the virus. They hoped for a kind of “new normal” as the Omicron wave ebbed and vaccination numbers increased.
The Capitol’s own mask requirements had become a political flashpoint. Some Republican lawmakers, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, racked up tens of thousands of dollars in fines for refusing to wear masks on the House floor, even as others eschewed masks throughout the rest of the complex.
Nicholas Wu and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.
