Several school districts have reinstituted mask orders as the COVID-19 pandemic heats up again. Governor Holcomb is backing them up.

Holcomb lifted a statewide mask order April 6. But some states, such as Florida and Texas, have gone a step further and banned local governments or schools from issuing their own. Holcomb praises the schools which have reissued mask orders, calling it “a wise decision when the facts warrant it.”

Nearly 15-hundred students statewide have tested positive in the last week, four times the week before.

Holcomb says he’s not surprised school districts have been getting pushback over mask orders. He notes he took plenty of criticism himself for a nine-month statewide mask order and other measures to combat the pandemic.

Holcomb’s repeating he won’t require vaccinations, though he continues to encourage Hoosiers to get the shot — nearly half of eligible Hoosiers still haven’t. Holcomb says the millions of people worldwide who have gotten the vaccine, with serious illnesses or side effects extremely rare, should dispel any fears people may have.

Holcomb does leave the door open to reviving one state-ordered pandemic measure: county-by-county gathering limits based on the Indiana Department of Health’s color-coded map of the virus’s spread. But he says there are no immediate plans to do so. He says the current approach of giving local governments the data they need to make their own decisions is working well. He says the state is trying to keep things simple to avoid confusion.