Denver’s indoor mask order will likely end next week, and the Tri-County Board of Health will meet Monday to discuss ending the mandate in Adams and Arapahoe counties for both the general public and schools.

Denver’s order is set to expire Feb. 4, more than two months after it was instituted just before Thanksgiving. But with cases declining and the omicron wave subsiding, health officials here are “encouraged by the continued decline in case rates, positivity and hospitalizations in Denver and across the metro area and it seems likely we will be able to let the public health order expire,” the city’s Department of Public Health and Environment said in a Friday release.

In Adams and Arapahoe counties, the mask order for schools expires Monday but will be extended four more days to give the board “time to consider” when to end the mandate, the agency said in a statement Friday morning. Health officials with Tri-County Health Department were considering extending it for another month, Executive Director John Douglas said earlier this week. The broader order for the general public does not have an exact end date: Its duration is instead pegged to intensive care bed capacity, which was significantly strained in late November, when the order was enacted.

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The agency’s board will hold a special meeting Monday that could end the order for both schools and the broader public.

“Cases of omicron COVID-19 … rose rapidly over the past month, and the more recent decline in cases among all age groups has been just as dramatic,” Tri-County Health Department wrote. ” … Given these trends and the growing availability to an array of prevention tools, particularly more effective medical grade masks and rapid tests, in addition to access to free vaccines, TCHD believes it is an appropriate time to consider ending the mask orders.”

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Douglas said in the release that officials “are increasingly confident” that the situation is stable enough “to allow schools, businesses and other members of the community to implement the protections they feel are most appropriate for their situation.”

When Denver instituted its order in November, it was initially set to expire Jan. 4. But officials here extended it another month, as the omicron surge picked up speed and reached unprecedented heights. The order was initially put into place in lockstep with Jefferson, Adams and Arapahoe counties: The delta wave was raging in November, and hospital capacity was significantly threatened in the metro area.

COVID-19 cases in Colorado remain high — higher than any point prior to the omicron wave beginning a month ago. But they’re falling quickly, and state researchers have said they will continue to do so in the weeks to come. With the amount of infection brought on by omicron and with high levels of vaccination, the state should enter a period of pandemic calm that could last into the summer months, those experts said this week.

The metro counties are among only a handful in the entire state to have instituted mask orders since the statewide mandate ended last spring. Orders in Summit and Eagle counties, enacted in late December as omicron ripped into those communities, have ended recently as the surge subsides.