CDC Issues Guidance for Masking in Health Care SettingsNAHC The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) has issued revised guidance for Interim Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations for Healthcare Personnel During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic . The guidance applies to all health care settings and provides a framework to implement select infection prevention and control practices based on their individual circumstances. Specifically, CDC added an appendix to assist facilities with how and when to implement broader use of source control (masking). CDC also announced that it will no longer be collecting information needed to track the community transmission rates of COVID-19. There are several considerations that CDC addresses that will help guide when a broad use of masking in the healthcare settings should be implemented.
Unfortunately, with the end of the public health emergency, CDC will no longer receive data needed to publish Community Transmission levels for SARS-CoV-2. CDC will continue to collect and report SARS-CoV-2 hospital admissions data on the CDC COVID Data Tracker, although not as accurate as community transmission levels for COVID-19 surveillance. These data continue to be available at the county level and are used by CDC to help the public decide when masking in the community should be considered. CDC is in the early stages of developing metrics that could be used to guide when to implement select infection prevention and control practices for multiple respiratory viruses. Data on the exact metric thresholds that correspond with a higher risk for transmission are lacking. In addition, data from these systems are generally not available for all jurisdictions. |