Denver’s indoor mask order will end at midnight Friday, returning the city to a face-covering-optional approach for the first time since Thanksgiving.

Every county in the metro with similar orders has indicated it will also allow its requirements to lapse at some point this month, with officials in Jefferson County voting Thursday to end their mandates in two weeks.

The metro — like much of the state — is on the downslide from the omicron wave, which erupted just before Christmas and sent case and positivity rates skyrocketing. At one point in early January, Denver averaged nearly 2,000 new cases every day. That number has now fallen well below 1,000. 

The downturn in cases and stabilized hospital situation means Denver’s face-covering order, instituted just before Thanksgiving, can end, city officials said earlier this week. Masks are still required in schools and child-care settings, though the officials indicated discussions around that aspect of the mandate are ongoing.

“Omicron has run out of fuel within our community,” Bob McDonald, the executive director of the city’s Department of Public Health and Environment, told reporters Monday. “It’s safe now to lift our face coverings.” 

Denver’s announcement came hours before the board of health overseeing Adams and Arapahoe counties voted to end its school and indoor mask orders Monday. Health departments in the metro had largely moved together in recent months to institute public health orders together, in the absence of a unified state response.

Jefferson County Public Health’s board had enacted its public health order requiring masks just before Thanksgiving, as Denver and others had. It had pegged the ending of that order to the county hitting certain COVID-19 metrics, which has not yet been achieved. Still, the board has kept in step with its metro partners: Its four members voted unanimously Thursday to pull the plug on masking in schools and indoor settings on Feb. 18.

The board had initially discussed ending the orders on Feb. 11; president Cheri Jahn said school officials had asked her and Dawn Comstock, the executive director of the county’s health department, to end the mandates but not before Feb. 11, to give them time to adjust.

But there was still hesitation from much of the board. Though numbers in Jefferson County have improved markedly of late, COVID-19 metrics remain higher than much of the rest of the pandemic. Member Lane Drager said he felt removing the orders now may be “premature.” Fellow member Harriet Hall said she was “incredibly torn” by the decision.

Ultimately, the members were comfortable with ending the orders on Feb. 18. They also carved out a contingency plan: If the decline in cases changes, the board can reassess its decision at its next board meeting before the Feb. 18 deadline. 

COVID-19 testing sites closed, opening later on Thursday due to weather

The indoor orders in the various metro counties were instituted at the tail end of the delta wave. By mid-November, hospital capacity statewide was significantly threatened, to the point that most health departments in the metro asked Gov. Jared Polis to institute a masking requirement statewide.

Polis refused, and authorities representing Adams, Denver, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties instituted mask mandates (Broomfield required face-coverings in indoor settings a few weeks later). 

Now, those orders are ending. Denver’s will expire at midnight Friday. Adams and Arapahoe counties’ orders will end Saturday. Broomfield’s order also expires after Thursday. And, now, Jefferson County’s will lapse in two weeks.

Though officials in Denver said this week that they can’t predict what will come next, they hoped the end of omicron meant the end of this type of requirement in general.

“My hope is we don’t have to go back to mandates in the fall,” McDonald said Monday, “and we can manage this with some of those more programatic tools.”