October 4, 2022 - Time and time again, experts have stressed that masking up indoors is one of the best things you can do to keep yourself and your community safe, especially as COVID-19 persists for yet another winter and we enter what’s supposed to be a really icky flu season. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly made a big move in late September: The public health agency loosened its universal masking guidance for health care settings.

The CDC didn’t make a huge announcement about the change. Instead, it simply published its “Interim Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations for Healthcare Personnel,” which refers to guidance for people working in areas like hospitals and nursing homes.

“Masks do provide protection against COVID, RSV, and influenza,” Dr. Schaffner says. So, whether you’re immunocompromised or generally healthy and boosted, it certainly doesn’t hurt to wear one in public, especially at the doctor’s office. After all, the importance of taking care of each other—and the simple steps we can take to do that—shouldn’t be a lesson we forget so soon.

Read more here. 

Source: <https://www.self.com/story/face-masks-health-care-settings-cdc>