Worcester’s Board of Health has passed a motion to drop the city’s indoor mask mandate.The motion to drop the mask mandate starting Feb. 18, next Friday, passed the board by a 3-2 vote Monday night. The motion was proposed by Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus and Dr. Michael Hirsh, the city’s medical director.Under the proposal, some businesses and colleges in Worcester are able to request dropping their mask mandates even earlier, as long as 90% of employees or students are vaccinated against COVID-19.Masks are still required to be worn on city buses.Worcester’s Board of Health also rejected a motion to automatically adopt whatever the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education decides regarding wearing masks in school buildings come Feb. 28, currently the final day of the state’s mask mandate for most K-12 public schools. That motion failed by a 3-2 vote.The motion regarding the mask mandate for Worcester Public Schools will be brought up again at the next Board of Health meeting, which is set for early March. Statewide, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been trending downward, suggesting the omicron surge had peaked. Mansfield, which originally planned to keep a mask mandate through the end of the month, lifted its indoor mask mandate on Monday after that community’s Board of Health voted last week to rescind the order. An indoor mask mandate still applies to town buildings like the library.In Canton, the town’s Board of Health voted Monday night to downgrade its indoor mask mandate to an indoor mask advisory starting Feb. 14.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that as of Wednesday, cases are down 53.1% from their peak on Jan. 15. However, other metrics remain high.In Massachusetts, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients is roughly half of what it was in mid-January but is still three times what it was in October.The CDC reports that community transmission is considered to be high across all of Massachusetts and 99% of all counties across the nation.