Mask Rules Relaxed in England’s Health Care Settings

Undated photo showing a mask being binned. (Niall Carson/PA Media)

The national requirement of universal mask-wearing in health care settings has been dropped in England under new official guidance.

Hospitals and GPs can now make their own policies, with some having already taken down signs that told patients to wear masks on entry and others calling on patients and staff to continue to wear masks and face coverings on their sites.

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust ended most of its mask-wearing requirement from Tuesday, with exceptions including in oncology and haematology areas, COVID-19 cohort areas, and any wards with COVID-19 outbreaks.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

The rule change came after the UK Health Security Agency published new COVID-19 guidance for health and care professionals on May 27.

In a letter (pdf) highlighting the new guidance, NHS England told local health bodies nonpharmaceutical interventions such as mask wearing and enhanced ventilation “may be used, depending on local prevalence and risk assessment,” in order to reduce CCP virus transmission.

Staff are told they should continue to wear masks when working in COVID-19 or other respiratory care pathways, and when clinically caring for suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients. But when in non-clinical areas such as offices, they’re generally not required to wear masks.

According to the letter, inpatients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 should wear a mask when they are in multi-bedded bays or communal areas, but only if it can be “tolerated” by the patient and is “deemed safe for the patient.”

These inpatients are also encouraged to wear a mask when being transferred, along with outpatients with respiratory symptoms if they can tolerate it.

Universal masking rules are subject to local risk assessment, and should be considered in settings where patients are at high risk of infection due to immunosuppression, NHS England said.

In other settings such as the emergency department, patients, families, and other visitors “are not routinely required to wear a facemask unless this is a personal preference, although they may be encouraged to do so following a local risk assessment.”

NHS England said the CCP virus pandemic and the relative infection prevention and control (IPC) measures in health care settings “continue to have an impact” on their capacity and flow, “with numbers of COVID-19 patients still elevated and some additional measures still in place.”

Hospitals are told they should start reverting to their own pre-pandemic IPC policies while acknowledging it may involve a period of transition.