MSU students crowd onto a bus on Feb. 15, 2022. CATA informed students that buses would now come around every 30 minutes instead of 10 due to labor shortages.
—Effective now, Capital Area Transportation Authority, or CATA, will no longer require masking on public transportation vehicles or at CATA bus stations.
This announcement comes as across campus and Ingham County, mask mandates have been slowly dropping since the start of the semester following the January Omicron wave. On Apr. 6, the City of East Lansing dropped face mask requirements at city officiated meetings and public meetings by the East Lansing City Council and board of commissions.
Since Jan. 29, 2021, the Center for Disease Control, or CDC, order on masking in public transportation hubs was no longer in effect across the country.
“We are working expeditiously to update our public notices and remove signage requiring masks,” CATA Chief Executive Officer Bradley T. Funkhouser said in the press release. “We appreciate our riders’ compliance with the TSA Security Directive for the past couple of years.”
Michigan State University is poised to drop mask mandates across campus by May 16 for the coming summer semester as COVID-19 policies shift to match the decline of cases in Ingham County.
While the policy toward wearing facial coverings aboard CATA buses has changed, it is still up to each passenger to ensure the safety of others and make responsible decisions about whether to wear a mask or not.
To have COVID-19 cases stay at a low level across campus if you are sick, ordering free at-home rapid COVID-19 tests at COVIDtests.gov can help keep the community safe in the coming summer months.
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