6M K95, Surgical Masks Available For NJ School Districts

State officials have set aside six million KN95 surgical masks for school districts across New Jersey as schools reopen.

Governor Phil Murphy announced that all individuals in a school, including students, teachers and staff, must wear a mask while in the building — regardless of vaccination status. "We will not take lightly to any district or any school that tries to finagle their way out of their responsibility to protect public health," Murphy tweeted on Monday.

The state is offering masks to districts who may need to encourage the protection measure.

"We remain committed to ensuring as safe a start to the school year as possible. Through the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management, we’ve identified approximately six million KN95 and surgical masks, along with roughly 500,000 child-sized masks that we will make available to districts on an as-needed basis." a public official said.

Last week, Murphy also announced that all New Jersey school teachers and staff, as well as state employees, must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 18. Murphy recently signed an executive order stating that all pre-K-12 school personnel must be vaccinated or undergo regular testing for COVID-19 at least once or twice a week.

As of Monday, there are 1,036 COVID-19 patients in New Jersey hospitals, that's 976 confirmed COVID-positive and 60 persons under investigation. There have been 1,327 new positive PCR tests and a positivity rate of 5.19 percent, according to state data.

New Jersey is the third state to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for teachers, behind California and Washington. The announcement comes as all 21 New Jersey counties hit a "high" transmission level of coronavirus for the first time since April 23, according to the latest rankings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Read more here: NJ Hits High COVID Transmission Rate, First Time Since April

Health officials, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have warned of rising coronavirus case numbers in New Jersey, possibly driven by the more-contagious delta variant.

In fact, all of New Jersey is now experiencing either high spread of coronavirus, according to the latest public health data. The CDC recommends that fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in public if they live in an area with "substantial" or "high" transmission of the virus — meaning that even the vaccinated should wear masks in indoor public spaces everywhere in New Jersey.

Patch reporter Anthony Bellano contributed to this report