According to the Bowling Green Daily News reporter Aaron Mudd, Western Kentucky University officials will be announcing a new mask mandate in effect at indoor campus facilities beginning Monday, August 9.
WKU President Tim Caboni wrote in an internal memo that while “this will come as a disappointment to some, it will allow (WKU) to continue with a normal semester in light of the spread of the Delta variant in our communities.”
Murray State University has made the same decision.
According to WKMS reporter Liam Niemeyer, MSU President Bob Jackson sent an e-mail Wednesday to students, faculty and staff updating the school’s COVID-19 protocols — in which all individuals, regardless of vaccination status, will be required to wear a mask indoors on all of its campuses, set to go into effect August 5.
Masks are not required in “personal living spaces,” per the e-mail, and not required outdoors.
Several other universities within the tri-state area have adopted similar or identical language prior to the start of the 2021 fall semester, as incidence rates and the number of cases continue to climb across the Commonwealth.
As of Wednesday, more than 2,500 new cases were recorded in Kentucky — the most since Feb. 3 — with a positivity rate over 10 percent. Nearly 900 are hospitalized state-wide due to COVID-19 treatment, and 84 of 120 counties are in the “red” incidence rate.
Only four counties in Kentucky are in the yellow or better: Trigg County, Fulton County, Hickman County and Nicholas County.
