Page 4 - Sharon Wright News Today

While Covid rates have been increasing, many hospitals staff no longer have to mask and leaders are minimizing risk. Here is how to protect yourself.

Nurses, researchers, and workplace safety officers worry new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might reduce protection against the coronavirus and other airborne pathogens in hospitals.

Liv Grace came down with respiratory infections three times over the course of four months. Each occurred after a visit to a medical provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. Grace, 36, a writer who uses they/them pronouns, was infected with respiratory syncytial virus, which led to pneumonia, in December, after they were treated by a nurse wearing a surgical mask who complained about her children being ill with the virus. Grace got COVID after a visit to a cancer center for an infusion in Februar

Amid an uptick in Covid infections, administrators, staff and patients are divided over the need for masks in health care settings.

Facing a potential wave of coronavirus infections this fall and winter, relatively few hospitals — mostly in New York, Massachusetts and California — have restored mask mandates for patients and staff members. The vast majority have not, and almost none require them for visitors.

A CDC panel’s draft controversially concluded that N95 face masks are equivalent to surgical face masks in certain settings.

A CDC advisory committee has been updating its 2007 standards for infection control in hospitals this year.

A CDC advisory committee has been updating its 2007 standards for infection control in hospitals this year.

A CDC advisory committee has been updating its 2007 standards for infection control in hospitals this year.

A CDC advisory committee has been updating its 2007 standards for infection control in hospitals this year.