Defenders of Mass. are pushing to continue masking in health care settings

A coalition of public health advocates is urging Massachusetts to keep masking requirements in place at health care facilities, even after the state’s COVID-19 emergency declaration expires in early May.

“Without universal masking precautions in healthcare, vulnerable people are at substantial risk of being exposed in waiting rooms or clinical settings against their will, violating their autonomy and deterring many people from seeking essential care,” the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity wrote in an open letter last week.

Coalition co-founder Dr. Lara Jirmanus, a family physician and professor at Harvard Medical School, told a virtual press conference on Wednesday that removing healthcare facility masking requirements will be especially risky for babies. and children who cannot hide.

“People can bring these infections to their loved ones and harm them,” Jirmanus said. “And I will say personally, as a parent of a 16-month-old baby, that’s part of my reckoning.”

In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its guidelines to relax masking requirements for healthcare facilities in areas of the country with lower levels of community transmission. (In Massachusetts, state masking requirements remained in health care settings even after the CDC changed.)

Relying on community transmission data to dictate masking is wrong, Jirmanus argued, citing underreported cases.

According to the coalition letter, “significantly fewer people are testing for COVID-19 because most required routine testing has ended, federal funding for COVID-19 testing has declined, and most rapid tests go unreported. . Additionally, most low-wage workers don’t have paid sick leave, and many are pressured or forced to go to work with COVID-19, or avoid testing.

The group cited data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, whose director estimated in September that only 4% to 5% of COVID-19 infections are actually reported.

Even when transmission rates are low, clinics and hospitals will remain an epicenter of COVID-19 patient care, creating opportunities for the virus to spread, according to the coalition letter. Removing masks from healthcare facilities also puts providers at risk at a time when the healthcare system is overwhelmed by staffing shortages, the group argued.

A spokesperson for the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said The Boston Globe that the state health department will continue to track cases of COVID-19 and make adjustments as circumstances change.

The spokesperson also told the World that infection control officials at several of Massachusetts’ largest hospital systems have repeatedly called on state health officials to end the mask mandate.

The Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity remains unconvinced.

“We wonder, when we look at this World article, why have hospital administrators pushed to remove masks? Is it a question of money? Jirmanus asked. ” That does not make sense. The removal of masks in health care…will cause epidemics of health care workers and this will exacerbate existing staffing shortages and thus exacerbate the budget crisis.

She added: “We all have a loved one in our lives who could be hurt by a COVID infection. …and we could all be harmed by a long COVID. So let’s be safer together.