Face masks

The Senate fell short Wednesday on overriding a veto to a bill that would have allowed K-12 students to opt out of COVID-19 mask-wearing mandates. The Republican measure was approved last month on the same day Cooper encouraged boards of education to end broad mask requirements.

The study included 61 school districts, more than 3,000 schools, and more than 1.1 million students and adults from across nine states, according to Duke University, which released the findings and is a member of the collaborative.

Depending on where you live, your community may have ended its mandate to wear a mask in public. But the pandemic isn't over and vulnerable people can still get sick or die. So what is our responsibility to the greater good?

The new state human resources policy still gives agency heads the ability to require masks in high-risk settings such as prisons, state-run hospitals and homeless shelters.

The federal health agency released new guidance for when Americans need to mask up indoors, saying about 70% of the population lives in a place where it's safe to go mask free.

Officials say the mandates can end due to decreasing case counts and hospitalizations across the county.

The governor said COVID-19 metrics continue to move in the right direction and vaccines are now widely available.

State health officials compared the rate of COVID-19 clusters in North Carolina schools without mask mandates to those that require masks.

Lawmakers came together to pass major spending proposals at the state and federal levels this week. New U.S. Census numbers confirm North Carolina's growing urban and suburban populations. And school districts around the state continue to waver on mandating masks in the classroom. Guest host Anita Rao gets analysis from Clark Reimer and Aisha Dew on some of the big political stories of the week.

The CDC says everyone in schools should be wearing a mask to guard against the spread of COVID-19 — especially with the highly contagious delta variant circulating and the unknowns that it brings. Since a statewide mask mandate expired, local school boards are making their own decisions about the rules for their students and staff when classes start up again.