All schools and child care facilities in Pitkin County will require universal masking for people over the age of 2 this fall to curb the spread of COVID-19 and keep kids in school as much as possible.
This week has seen restaurants open to indoor dining and public schools closed to in-person learning, but that scenario won’t last much longer.
The board of health’s decision Monday to put Pitkin County under Red level restrictions confines restaurants in Aspen, Redstone, Snowmass Village and other locales to outdoor dining and takeout meals only, starting Sunday.
Yet the Aspen School District isn’t bound to the same color-code restrictions that businesses follow. The district instead makes its operating decisions based on consultations with county health officials and virus trends among students and staff.
“For the most part, we are seeing a huge amount of quarantining but almost nobody gets sick while in quarantine,” Superintendent David Baugh said Tuesday. “And we don’t feel like here it’s being transmitted in the schools.”