MILWAUKEE— After extending the county-wide mask mandate across Dane County late in January, Public Health Madison Dane County Monday confirmed that it will let its current face covering order expire on March 1.

"Things are going in the right direction," Janel Heinrich, Director of Public Health Madison & Dane County. "We anticipate that [cases] will continue to decrease and that's good news, [and waiting until March 1] allows time for that decrease to continue, and time for folks and organizations who may want to develop their own policies to have those in place."

In place essentially since August, Heinrich said the current hope among public health experts that massive spikes of COVID-19 case activity are now behind us informed this decision.

"We may see little bubbles of illness and those numbers may go up again," Heinrich added, "but we would hope that given what we know and what we're watching around the country and around the world with regard to omicron that this could be the last big surge right now."

You can watch the entire interview with Janel Heinrich above.