Nurses, researchers and defense guards are concerned that new rules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will reduce coverage against coronavirus and other airborne pathogens in hospitals.
A CDC advisory committee this year updated its 2007 criteria for hospital infections. Many fitness professionals and scientists expressed outrage after the organization released a draft of its proposals in June.
The study controversially concluded that N95 masks are equivalent to more flexible surgical masks in some settings, and that doctors and nurses only wear surgical masks when treating patients inflamed with “common and endemic” viruses, such as those that cause seasonal influenza.
The committee was scheduled to vote on the adjustments on Aug. 22, but postponed action until November. Once the opinion is finalized, the CDC initiates a procedure to convert the committee’s evaluation into rules that U. S. hospitals follow. After the meeting, members of the public expressed fear about the direction the CDC would take, especially as covid-19 cases rise. Nationally, covid hospitalizations and deaths have been surging for several consecutive weeks.
“Health care services are the place where some of the most vulnerable people in our population have to hang out or stay,” Gwendolyn Hill, a study intern at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said after the committee’s presentation. He said N95 masks, ventilation generation and air purification can reduce covid transmission rates within hospital walls and “help other people not come out sicker than they arrived. “
“We are very excited to receive feedback,” Alexander Kallen, prevention and response leader in CDC’s division of promoting quality of physical care, told KFF Health News. “Our purpose is to expand the rules that patients, visitors and fitness workers must follow. “that the draft rules were far from final.
In June, members of the CDC (the Advisory Committee on Infection Control Practices in Health Care) released a draft of their report, presenting studies that found no difference in infection rates between fitness providers who wore N95 masks and those who wore surgical masks. mask in the clinic. They noticed flaws in the data. For example, many fitness staff members who contracted covid tests did not become inflamed when they put on the mask at work, but still concluded that the masks were equivalent.
Its location runs counter to the CDC’s 2022 report, which found that an N95 mask reduces the chances of testing positive for the coronavirus by 83%, to 66% for the surgical mask and to 56% for the cloth mask. trial published in 2017, which concluded that the N95 mask was far superior to the surgical mask in protecting healthcare workers from influenza infections. And this contradicts a comprehensive assessment by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, which concluded that the N95 mask, also known as N95 respirators were more effective against covid than surgical masks in healthcare facilities around the world.
“It’s shocking to recommend that we want more studies to know if N95 ventilators are effective against an airborne pathogen,” Kaitlin Sundling, a physician and pathologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a comment after the June meeting. The science of N95 respirators is well established and based on physical properties, filtered technical tissues, and our clinical experience of how airborne transmission works. “
Your claim is subsidized through California’s advocacy agency, Cal/OSHA, whose regulations on protecting at-risk personnel from infection may be at odds with those of the CDC if the proposals are approved. “CDC will not have to undermine respiratory coverage regulations by falsely and misleadingly claiming that there is no difference in coverage” between the N95 mask and the surgical mask, Deborah Gold, a commercial hygienist with Cal/OSHA, said at the August meeting.
Investigators and defense experts were also speechless about how the committee classified airborne pathogens. A surgical mask, rather than an N95, was recommended as a cover for a category they created for “common and endemic” viruses that spread over short distances. and “to which Americans and communities deserve to have some immunity. “Three representatives of the committee, researchers Hilary Babcock, Erica Shenoy and Sharon Wright, were among the authors of a June editorial that said hospitals deserve to no longer require all physical care workers to wear masks in hospitals. “Now is the time to apply policies that do not adapt to an endemic pathogen,” they wrote.
However, in a call with KFF Health News, Kallen clarified that the committee has placed coronaviruses that cause colds in this category, but still coronaviruses that cause covid.
The committee’s next point was that of viruses in “pandemic phase”, when the pathogen is new and there is little immunity from infection or vaccination. He said fitness staff wear an N95 mask when treating patients inflamed with N95 microbes. It’s the third, and the highest coverage point was reserved for pathogens like those that cause measles and tuberculosis, which they say can spread more than lower-point threats and require an N95.
Virologists said the committee’s categories have little basis, biologically speaking. The mode of spread of a pathogen is not affected by its frequency; non-unusual viruses can still harm vulnerable populations; and many viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, can reach significant distances in microscopic droplets suspended in the air.
“Large COVID outbreaks in prisons and long-term care facilities have shown that the habit of infectious aerosols is easy to classify and that those aerosols are safely contained,” Eric Berg, Cal/OSHA’s deputy chief health officer, wrote in a fear letter to the CDC committee. received via KFF Health News.
The committee compared its evaluation of the N95 mask to its disadvantages. Their work cites a study from Singapore in which about a third of fitness workers, usually nurses, said wearing such a mask negatively affected their work, causing acne and other disorders to worsen. in hot and humid situations and long shifts. Instead of throwing away the mask, the authors of this study proposed better-fitting masks and breaks.
Noha Aboelata, a physician and executive director of the Roots Community Health Center in Oakland, Calif. , agrees. “There are other methods to implement, such as advanced mask design and increased testing,” he said, “if we know it’s unacceptable to give covid to a patient when they go to the hospital. “
Aboelata is among many doctors, researchers and others who signed a letter to CDC Director Mandy Cohen in July, expressing fear that the CDC committee would weaken protections at hospitals. They also warned that cutting the N95 mask could have an effect on emergency stockpiles. making doctors and nurses as vulnerable as they were in 2020, when mask shortages fueled infections. More than 3,600 fitness staff members died in the first year of the pandemic in the United States, according to a joint investigation by KFF Health News and The Guardian.
The doctors involved expect the committee to reconsider its report in light of new studies and insights before November. Referring to the project, Rocelyn de Leon-Minch, an industrial hygienist at National Nurses United, said, “If they finish codifying those criteria of care, it will have a disastrous effect on patient protection and have an effect on our ability to respond to long-term health issues.
This article was produced through KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on fitness issues and is one of KFF’s primary operating systems: the independent source for fitness policies, surveys and journalistic investigations. .
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Nurses, researchers and defense guards are concerned that new rules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will reduce coverage against coronavirus and other airborne pathogens in hospitals.
A CDC advisory committee this year updated its 2007 criteria for hospital infections. Many fitness professionals and scientists expressed outrage after the organization released a draft of its proposals in June.
The study controversially concluded that N95 masks are equivalent to more flexible surgical masks in some settings, and that doctors and nurses only wear surgical masks when treating patients inflamed with “common and endemic” viruses, such as those that cause seasonal influenza.
The committee was scheduled to vote on the adjustments on Aug. 22, but postponed action until November. Once the opinion is finalized, the CDC initiates a procedure to convert the committee’s evaluation into rules that U. S. hospitals follow. U. S. After the meeting, members of the public expressed fear about the direction the CDC would take, especially as covid-19 cases rise. Nationally, covid hospitalizations and deaths have been surging for several consecutive weeks.
“Health care services are the place where some of the most vulnerable people in our population have to hang out or stay,” Gwendolyn Hill, a study intern at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said after the committee’s presentation. He said N95 masks, ventilation generation and air purification can reduce covid transmission rates within hospital walls and “help other people not come out sicker than they arrived. “
“We are very excited to receive feedback,” Alexander Kallen, prevention and response leader in CDC’s division of promoting quality of physical care, told KFF Health News. “Our purpose is to expand the rules that patients, visitors and fitness workers must follow. “that the draft rules were far from final.
In June, members of the CDC (the Advisory Committee on Infection Control Practices in Health Care) released a draft of their report, presenting studies that found no difference in infection rates between fitness providers who wore N95 masks and those who wore surgical masks. mask in the clinic. They noticed flaws in the data. For example, many fitness staff members who contracted covid tests did not become inflamed when they put on the mask at work, but still concluded that the masks were equivalent.
Its location runs counter to the CDC’s 2022 report, which found that an N95 mask reduces the chances of testing positive for the coronavirus by 83%, to 66% for the surgical mask and to 56% for the cloth mask. trial published in 2017, which concluded that the N95 mask was far superior to the surgical mask in protecting healthcare workers from influenza infections. And this contradicts a comprehensive assessment by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, which concluded that the N95 mask, also known as N95 respirators were more effective against covid than surgical masks in healthcare facilities around the world.
“It’s shocking to recommend that we want more studies to know if N95 ventilators are effective against an airborne pathogen,” Kaitlin Sundling, a physician and pathologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a comment after the June meeting. The science of N95 respirators is well established and based on physical properties, filtered technical tissues, and our clinical experience of how airborne transmission works. “
Your claim is subsidized through California’s advocacy agency, Cal/OSHA, whose regulations on protecting at-risk personnel from infection may be at odds with those of the CDC if the proposals are approved. “CDC will not have to undermine respiratory coverage regulations by falsely and misleadingly claiming that there is no difference in coverage” between the N95 mask and the surgical mask, Deborah Gold, a commercial hygienist with Cal/OSHA, said at the August meeting.
Investigators and defense experts were also speechless about how the committee classified airborne pathogens. A surgical mask, rather than an N95, was recommended as a cover for a category they created for “common and endemic” viruses that spread over short distances. and “to which Americans and communities deserve to have some immunity. “Three representatives of the committee, researchers Hilary Babcock, Erica Shenoy and Sharon Wright, were among the authors of a June editorial that said hospitals deserve to no longer require all physical care workers to wear masks in hospitals. “Now is the time to apply policies that do not adapt to an endemic pathogen,” they wrote.
However, in a call with KFF Health News, Kallen clarified that the committee has placed coronaviruses that cause colds in this category, but still coronaviruses that cause covid.
The committee’s next point was that of viruses in the “pandemic phase,” when the pathogen is new and there is little immunity from infection or vaccination. He said fitness staff wear an N95 mask when treating patients inflamed with N95 microbes. It’s the third, and the highest coverage point was reserved for pathogens like those that cause measles and tuberculosis, which they say can spread more than lower-point threats and require an N95.
Virologists said the committee’s categories have little basis, biologically speaking. The mode of spread of a pathogen is not affected by its frequency; non-unusual viruses can still harm vulnerable populations; and many viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, can reach significant distances in microscopic droplets suspended in the air.
“Large COVID outbreaks in prisons and long-term care facilities have shown that the habit of infectious aerosols is easy to classify and that those aerosols are safely contained,” Eric Berg, Cal/OSHA’s deputy chief health officer, wrote in a fear letter to the CDC committee. received via KFF Health News.
The committee compared its evaluation of the N95 mask to its disadvantages. Their work cites a study from Singapore in which about a third of fitness workers, usually nurses, said wearing such a mask negatively affected their work, causing acne and other disorders to worsen. in hot and humid situations and long shifts. Instead of throwing away the mask, the authors of this study proposed better-fitting masks and breaks.
Noha Aboelata, a physician and executive director of the Roots Community Health Center in Oakland, Calif. , agrees. “There are other methods to implement, such as advanced mask design and increased testing,” he said, “if we know it’s unacceptable to give covid to a patient when they go to the hospital. “
Aboelata is among many doctors, researchers and others who signed a letter to CDC Director Mandy Cohen in July, expressing fear that the CDC committee would weaken protections at hospitals. They also warned that cutting the N95 mask could have an effect on emergency stockpiles. making doctors and nurses as vulnerable as they were in 2020, when mask shortages fueled infections. More than 3,600 fitness staff members died in the first year of the pandemic in the United States, according to a joint investigation by KFF Health News and The Guardian.
The doctors involved expect the committee to reconsider its report in light of new studies and insights before November. Referring to the project, Rocelyn de Leon-Minch, an industrial hygienist at National Nurses United, said, “If they finish codifying those criteria of care, it will have a disastrous effect on patient protection and have an effect on our ability to respond to long-term health issues.
This article was produced through KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on fitness issues and is one of KFF’s primary operating systems: the independent source for fitness policies, surveys and journalistic investigations. .
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on fitness issues and is one of the primary operating systems for KFF, an independent fitness policy research, survey and journalism agency. Learn more about KFF.
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