The Jefferson County Board of Health voted Thursday to end its mask mandate for indoor, child care and school settings beginning this weekend, accelerating a timetable the board set last week and marking the imminent end of indoor masking in the metro area.

The board called a special meeting for Thursday afternoon and voted to end the mandate effective 11:59 p.m. Friday, Jefferson County Public Health spokeswoman Noella Rios said in an email. The vote marks a shift from the board’s action just a week ago, when it decided to keep masks in place for both the public and schools until Feb. 18. 

Rios said the order was being rescinded “after hearing from local leaders, residents and listening to the best public health guidance available.” She said decreases in cases, hospitalizations and deaths motivated the decision to move up the order’s end.

“We also wanted to try and avoid confusion among residents, business owners, educators and visitors because Jefferson County’s (public health order) did not have an automatic expiration date as other counties did,” she added.

Last week, as mask mandates in other parts of the metro expired or were rescinded, the Jefferson County board voted to wait a bit longer than its neighbors. Board President Cheri Jahn and then-health department executive director Dawn Comstock said schools in the county had asked that the mandate be lifted but not before Feb. 11, to give them time to prepare.

Board member Lane Drager said he felt a Feb. 11 timeline was potentially premature, and fellow member Harriet Hall said she was “incredibly torn” by the decision. They said that though the omicron wave was subsiding, they wanted more data before officially pulling the plug on the order.

State data has continued to demonstrate that omicron is fading. There are now fewer Coloradans hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any point since early October, and cases have fallen significantly below peak levels from a month ago. 

With the expiration of Jefferson County’s order, all county-level public health orders requiring masking in the metro will have either ended or have an imminent expiration date. Denver, Adams and Arapahoe counties all dropped their face-covering requirements last week. Broomfield County’s order expired last week, too. The mask requirement for schools and child care settings in Denver will end later this month. 

Thursday’s shift is not the first piece of news to come from the county’s board of health this week: On Monday, the board spent two hours in a closed-door meeting, during which Comstock resigned. 

Comstock did not return a request for comment earlier this week seeking more information about her exit from the agency. In a statement, Jahn thanked Comstock and said the board “will begin the process of transitioning (Comstock’s) position once her resignation is complete.”

Rios said earlier this week that the board’s attorney was negotiating the terms of Comstock’s separation with her lawyer. The spokeswoman did not return an email asking if Comstock had been asked to resign or if her future had been discussed previously.