(Bloomberg) -- Covid-19 prevention guidelines should be strengthened for hospitals and clinics, where workers remain at high infection risk even as the omicron surge dissipates, a prominent House Democrat said in a letter to top U.S. public-health official Rochelle Walensky.
Isolation and quarantine requirements for exposed workers and the public should be lengthened, Representative Ro Khanna of California said in the letter to Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recommendations for reusing single-use masks are outdated and should be rescinded, Khanna said.
The U.S. is moving away from an emergency response to the pandemic as the country comes out of a rapid spike in infections caused by fast-spreading omicron. Just last week, the CDC dialed back its threshold for Covid-19 masking recommendations, a move to prioritize protecting hospitals and vulnerable people over broadly preventing infections.
The new recommendations for masking in public indoor spaces don't apply to health-care settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, according to the CDC website. In most cases, agency guidelines recommend that health care professionals use of N95 respirators or well-fitting face masks for an entire shift, unless they become soiled, damaged, or hard to breathe through.
CDC's guidelines for reusing masks were put in place early in the pandemic, when personal protective equipment was in short supply. When the supply and availability of N95 respirators increased in May 2021, the agency said the need for such strategies had passed.
Under Fire
Yet health workers are still using masks in ways that are unsafe because of a lack of the unclear and confusing guidance, Khanna said. Together with National Nurses United, a labor union with around 175,000 members nationwide, and fellow Democratic California lawmakers including Ritchie Torres and Barbara Lee, Khanna urged Walensky to clarify the ways masks should be used in health-care settings.
The letter also called for guidance that differentiates between masks and respirators, which give more protection against airborne viruses. CDC's definition of close contact, part of its guideline on Covid exposure, also needs review, the letter said.
“Everyone is anxious to bring this long pandemic to an end, but the CDC's decisions to relax safety protocols are dangerous for patients” and put further strain on overwhelmed front-line caregivers, Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, one of the presidents of the nurses union, said Friday in a statement.
The CDC didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
“At this point we should be protecting our nurses and health-care workers and really appreciating the sacrifices they've made,” Khanna said. “They don't feel safe, and that should be the metric, not what people here in Washington think. They've been on the front line; we can't have callous disregard for the most vulnerable in our society”
U.S. officials have repeatedly come under fire regarding Covid recommendations involving health workers. The agency was criticized earlier this year when it shortened recommended periods for isolation and quarantine, and then for not backing routine testing for exposed people before resuming normal activities.
Trimming those periods was intended to get exposed people back to work faster and help reduce staffing shortages. Still some labor groups and public-health experts said the guidance prioritized the needs of businesses, supply chains and schools over those of vulnerable workers.
“We can have stricter guidelines in health-care settings while allowing most of the country to start to return to normal,” Khanna said. “If there were another variant of concern, those are the places we need to keep safe.”
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