Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center in Santa Rosa, California, suffered a Covid-19 outbreak … [+]
Guess what happened within a few weeks of Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center lifting its face mask requirements. The answer rhymes with headache, as in a Covid-19 outbreak. And now, the Medical Center based in Santa Rosa, California, has reinstituted face mask requirements for now.
A statement from Kaiser Permanente Northern California described the outbreak: “Recently at our Santa Rosa Hospital, more than a dozen out of our approximately 3,500 staff members and some patients have tested positive for Covid-19.” The statement continued with, “In response, effective immediately, physicians and staff are required to mask in the Santa Rosa Hospital and Emergency Department while providing direct patient care. We are requiring all visitors to mask upon entrance to the hospital and throughout their visit.”
The statement emphasized that, “We monitor and adhere to all applicable federal, state, and local regulations regarding masking and other public health interventions.” It added, “These guidelines recently changed on April 3, 2023 to no longer require but continue to recommend the use of masks for members, patients, visitors, and staff at all healthcare facilities. Kaiser Permanente has adhered to that guidance, and also has infection control guidelines for an outbreak situation.”
Indeed, on April 3, the California Department of Public Health did basically go bye-bye to all remaining statewide masks mandates, as Twitterer @SarahLerner pointed out with the following tweet:
As you can see, Lerner wrote, “We knew this would happen.” Why? Well, abruptly dropping severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) precautions followed soon by an outbreak or surge in Covid-19 has kind of happened again and again since the Spring of 2021. Atmospheric chemist Kimberly Prather, PhD, offered a rather grounded response to the Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center Covid-19 outbreak, calling it “Groundhog day” on Twitter:
That’s from Prather, a Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego. That’s the kind of background that brings knowledge about how to protect against airborne stuff like the SARS-CoV-2 and would have earned a blue check mark on Twitter before April 20.
Recent weeks have seen more and more healthcare facilities drop their face mask requirements rather abruptly, a bit like how many health and scientific experts lost their blue check marks on Twitter rather abruptly on April 20. These are healthcare facilities, you know the places that people go when they are sick—potentially very sick—and have weaker immune systems. And what can happen when people with weakened immune systems get Covid-19? The answer is not good. After all, the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet, despite what some politicians may claim. And there is still no clear national plan on how to keep the more vulnerable protected against Covid-19.
This is certainly not to say that face mask requirements should continue forever in healthcare facilities. Rather, the problem is abruptly dropping face mask use everywhere based on fuzzy metrics and with no clear transition plan in place. There are still a lot of questions floating around, kind of like how the SARS-CoV-2 is still floating around in the air in many places. For example, how many facilities and buildings have improved their air filtration and purification since 2019? Are there good surveillance systems in place to determine when and where face mask requirements should be maintained versus relaxed versus reinstituted? Would it make better sense to relax face mask requirements more gradually and progressively in a more tailored manner rather than in a “here today, gone tomorrow” manner? The approach to the Covid-19 pandemic continues to be kind of an all-or-none and one-size-fits-all, which may be fine when you are talking about a wearable blanket or a box of doughnuts but not with public health measures.
The approach continues to be way too reactive as well. Rather than prevent surges and outbreaks, the response throughout much of the Covid-19 pandemic has too often been wait until something bad happens and then say, “Whoops, didn’t expect that to happen” or more like “Oops, I did it again,” and quickly reinstitute Covid-19 precautions after people have already gotten sick.