An official website of the United States government
COVID-19 Stats: Percentage of Middle and High School Students Aged 13–21 Years Attending In-Person Classes Who Reported Observing Fellow Students Wearing a Mask All the Time,* by School Setting and Activity — United States, October 2020
Weekly / February 12, 2021 / 70(6);223
Click here to see a simplified version of this graph for use on social media.
* Based on responses by students participating in a Falcon-CDC Foundation cross-sectional web panel survey administered using Qaltrics. Students were asked the following question: “Thinking about students you see at school, how often do these students wear masks in the following locations?” Responses ranged from “all the time” to “never.”
Mask wearing is a critical mitigation strategy in preventing the introduction and spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), within school settings. In October 2020, a sample of 3,953 middle and high school students aged 13–21 years who were attending in-person classes were asked about mask use by fellow students in several settings. Approximately 65% of students reported that fellow students wore a mask “all the time” in the classroom and in hallways or stairwells. However, reported use of masks all the time was lower in other indoor locations, including school buses (42%), restrooms (40%), and the cafeteria (when not eating) (36%). Reported observed mask use all the time was lowest during sports or extracurricular activities (28%) and outside on school property (25%).
Source: Falcon Goal 1 Student Web Panel Survey, October 1–24, 2020.
Reported by: Wences Arvelo, MD, dwi4@cdc.gov; Melissa Fahrenbruch, MED; Marisa Hast, PhD; Richard Puddy, PhD.
Suggested citation for this article: COVID-19 Stats: Percentage of Middle and High School Students Aged 13–21 Years Attending In-Person Classes Who Reported Observing Fellow Students Wearing a Mask All the Time, by School Setting and Activity — United States, October 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2021;70:223. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7006a5.
MMWR and Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report are service marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
All HTML versions of MMWR articles are generated from final proofs through an automated process. This conversion might result in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users are referred to the electronic PDF version (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr) and/or the original MMWR paper copy for printable versions of official text, figures, and tables.
Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.