Masking should continue in healthcare facilities to protect patients, experts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have suggested.
The request is because medical staff are notorious for working while sick and asymptomatic individuals can still transmit respiratory viruses, particularly Covid and RSV.
While masks were initially seen as a virus prevention measure, they have become a prominent symbol of the US’s Covid culture wars.
Officials gave mixed messages about their effectiveness at the start of the pandemic.
Studies that came later failed to show conclusively that masks prevented Covid — yet millions of Americans were forced to abide by mandates.
It comes as the latest pandemic restrictions were lifted last week and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid was no longer a global health emergency.
Asymptomatic individuals can still transmit respiratory viruses, particularly Covid, meaning masking should continue, experts argued
Researchers from the George Washington University School of Medicine and the NIH said “data show that patient-to-staff and staff-to-patent transfers, when both are masked, are uncommon.”
The document, published in magazine Annals of Internal Medicinesaid: ‘While no gold standard evidence is available, we argue that despite the lack of clinical efficacy studies (such as in the widely accepted practice of hand hygiene), masking in interactions between patients and healthcare professionals should continue to receive serious attention. consideration as a patient safety measure.”
One of the researchers’ reasons for persisting in mask-wearing in healthcare facilities is presenteeism.
This productivity loss occurs when employees are unable to function fully in the workplace due to illness.
Half to two-thirds of healthcare workers, who the researchers said are “notorious for coming to work sick,” said they came to work with symptoms of respiratory disease.
This is due to not putting extra strain on colleagues, the belief that respiratory viruses are mild, the fear of being punished for not working and the moral obligation to be there for patients.
The newspaper said: “We can find no reason to believe that this long-standing behavior will change when the masks come off.”
The researchers also argued that the fact that asymptomatic individuals can still transmit respiratory viruses, particularly Covid, means that masking should continue.
They said up to a third of Omicron infections are asymptomatic, but “can nevertheless cause serious or life-threatening illness or long-term illness if transmitted to immunologically vulnerable patients.”
They suggested alternative policies such as masking only during respiratory virus season starting in the fall, wearing masks from higher-risk patients, or masking staff and visitors but offering optional masking for patients.
While the researchers acknowledged common criticisms of masks, including hindering communication and hindering empathy, they said this should motivate engineers to better design masks.
The message to mask is at odds with recent commentary from eight US institutions suggesting the time for universal masking is over, also published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
Masks have long been a controversial Covid strategy due to the lack of hard evidence that they are effective.
One of the most comprehensive meta-analyses of face coverings found that masks made “little to no difference” to Covid infection or death rates in community settings.
The debate around masks first turned sour in 2020 when health officials flipped their effectiveness.
Then-NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in 2020 that masks “didn’t provide the perfect protection that people think it is.”
He later suggested that people should wear masks as a sign of “respect” for others. He admitted to lying to the public about the effectiveness of masks in preventing panic buying and preserving masks for healthcare workers.
The CDC website currently states that masks can help protect the wearer and others from Covid.
The agency still recommends that Americans wear masks in places with high levels of transmission, such as on public transportation.
Critics of masks claim they have hindered communication and children’s development and progress in school.
Increases in RSV and flu this winter have been attributed in part to face-covering mandates because they prevented children from developing natural immunity to other diseases.