Just over a month after dropping the policy, Prince George’s County Public Schools announced it will be bringing back its indoor mask mandate starting Aug. 15.

In a statement issued Friday, the school system announced it will be reinstating the policy in all schools and facilities until further notice. Consistently taking a more cautious approach to COVID procedures compared to its regional peers, the school system was the last in the region to drop its mask mandate in July, and is now the first to bring it back.

According to PGCPS, the decision was made at the guidance of the county’s public health department, and in light of the highly transmissible BA.5 variant. Community transmission of the virus in Prince George’s County is in the “high” range according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The metric is determined by the case rate per 100,000 residents, the rate of new COVID patients admitted to the hospital, and the percentage of beds occupied with COVID-19 patients.

As of Friday, the county reported a case rate of 205, and 11 new hospital admissions per 100,000 residents. Six percent of hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.

Other school systems in the region have yet to issue a similar mask guidance for students, who are due back in classrooms in roughly a month. In neighboring Montgomery County, the health department recently issued a recommendation for indoor masking as the county entered high transmission of the virus, but the public school system has not mandated students wear masks again after dropping the policy last spring.

In D.C., officials have not reinstated a mask mandate, although the city is attempting to enforce one of the strictest COVID-19 student vaccination requirements in the nation. Following the passage of a new law in 2021, all students 12 and over (for whom the FDA has granted full authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine) must be vaccinated against the virus in order to attend school.