This staff report was published July 28 in the Valley News.
HANOVER — Dartmouth College now is requiring people on campus to wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status, amid increasing Covid-19 case counts due to the delta variant, according to college officials.
The college’s move, announced on Thursday, came a day after the town of Hanover similarly implemented an indoor mask mandate.
At Dartmouth, masking is not required outdoors, or if people are in a private, “non-shared space” such as a dorm room or office, or when they are actively eating or drinking, according to the community message from Interim Provost David Kotz and Executive Vice President Rick Mills. Students who share a dorm room are allowed to go unmasked with roommates if they don’t have symptoms, the message said.
Dartmouth also is likely to require more frequent Covid-19 surveillance testing for vaccinated employees and students in order to identify and interrupt asymptomatic spread of the virus, they said.
As of Wednesday, the college had 10 active cases of Covid-19, and 93% of the on-campus community had been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
Grafton County, which is home to Hanover, is now showing a “substantial” level of community transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kotz and Mills, in their message, said they were hopeful they could relax the mask requirement at the end of September.
