Boulder County officials voted Monday night to end the county’s indoor and school mask requirements, part of a wave of mitigation rollbacks across the state as the omicron wave subsides.

The orders will expire at 5 p.m. Friday, according to a news release from Boulder County Public Health. Masks will no longer be required in indoor settings, in child care or school environments, or in youth activities. The orders requiring face-coverings in various settings in the counties have been in place since late summer, when the delta wave was first emerging and as schools were preparing to welcome students again.

“The most recent COVID-19 data for Boulder County is highly encouraging – 73 percent of the county’s residents are up to date on their COVID-19 vaccination, the surge of the omicron variant has peaked and appears to be less severe than previous variants, including in children, and new cases and positive tests are declining,” Camille Rodriguez, the executive director of Boulder County Public Health, said in a statement Monday.

Boulder’s decision is the latest in a series of such moves in and around the metro area in recent weeks. The board of health for Tri-County Health – with authority over Adams and Arapahoe counties – voted late last month to end masks in schools and indoor settings generally. In January, Denver health officials announced they would allow their indoor requirement to end. Last week, they said the school mandate would also end near the end of February. Jefferson County’s board has also voted to end its various requirements.

Larimer County, which like Boulder had face-covering requirements before the rest of the metro, announced it, too, would stop requiring face-coverings.

With the recent shift across the metro, Boulder was among the last counties in the state to still require face-coverings in indoor settings. Pitkin County continues to require them and has for months; its two neighbors, Summit and Eagle counties, both enacted a similar requirement as the omicron wave took hold, but both have since ended their mandates.

The unspooling of mask requirements comes as the omicron wave, which sent case and hospitalization rates skyrocketing last month, continues to recede, leaving in its wake a high level of immunity among the general public. That level of protection, officials say, should usher in a period of pandemic calm for the state that could stretch into the summer months.

Rodriguez urged residents to continue to get vaccinated and to mask indoors, and the agency noted that individual schools and businesses can continue requiring face-coverings of their own volition. Boulder has one of the better vaccination rates in the state: As of Monday, 79% of the county’s eligible residents were fully inoculated.

“While these trends are promising, the risk of serious illness and hospitalization remains, particularly for the most vulnerable members of the county,” she said in her statement. “COVID-19 is still a potentially deadly virus and everyone should continue to take steps to protect themselves and at-risk community members.”