Wearing a mask in health care settings had little, if any, impact on the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19 among patients, British researchers suggest.
During the COVID pandemic, mask mandates for hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes became a staple of many countries’ attempts at curbing the spread of the virus. In the United Kingdom, all staff and visitors at health care facilities were required to wear splash-resistant surgical face masks until June 2022, after which individual hospitals may decide their own mask policies.
“A low-tech, low-cost intervention without well-established benefit was reasonable in the context of the early pandemic,” said scientists at St George’s Hospital in London. “However, with a reduction in the severity of COVID-19 disease, in later variants, the risk-benefit balance becomes more questionable.”…