Manitoba to drop mask mandate in hospitals

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This article was published 04/05/2023 (857 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — The last COVID-19 restriction in Manitoba is about to be lifted: masks won’t be required in hospitals, care homes and most health-care facilities as of May 10.

Shared Health announced the lifting of health-care mask mandates Wednesday, stating most visitors and patients won’t have to wear masks, but will be asked to wear a mask if they are sick. Exceptions include visits to cancer or organ-transplant programs where immune-compromised patients are regularly present.

Monika Warren, Shared Health chief operating officer of provincially co-ordinated services and its chief nursing officer, stated masks will still be available in health-care settings and facilities will continue to be “mask-friendly.”

“The changes in masking requirements are based on advice given by infection prevention and control experts and reflect the changes we’ve seen with virus transmission in our province over the past year,” she stated.

The move follows similar changes in other provinces; Manitoba was one of the last to keep mask requirements in hospitals, although Alberta still requires them in patient areas. Saskatchewan and B.C. made masks optional in early April for hospital staff, patients, and visitors. Governments in Ontario and Quebec left the decision up to individual health-care organizations.

Three COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care homes were reported in the most recent provincial respiratory virus report for the week of April 16 to April 22. No COVID-19 outbreaks have been reported in hospital settings since last December, but hospital patients continue to test positive for COVID-19.

Dr. Philippe Lagacé-Wiens, medical microbiologist at St. Boniface Hospital, said he would have preferred to see a gradual lifting of mask requirements in health-care settings, with masks remaining mandatory in all clinical and patient-treatment areas for now.

“I think most of my colleagues and I would have appreciated maybe a step in that direction without removing it almost entirely.”

He said he’s not against removing the mask mandate in non-clinical areas where patients aren’t present, such as labs and offices.

“It’s probably a reasonable time to start looking at that, but I think in terms of protecting our patient population, it would have been wiser to take an interim step where clinical areas were still protected by staff masking all the time.”

Provincial Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said he is comfortable with certain mandates being lifted, but it must be done with “extreme caution” to keep vulnerable people safe.

“When it comes to masks, we’re still concerned about the protection of vulnerable people who are medically fragile, who were pretty much ignored throughout the pandemic. The PCs love to turn the page and pretend it didn’t happen,” Lamont stated.

“We still need to protect people, but public health in all its reach has fallen by the wayside. The PCs could have spent the entire pandemic investing in public labs and fixing the system for the future, including modern ventilation. Instead, the system is more fragile than it’s ever been.”

NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara said: “The PCs should be following recommendations from the chief public health officer. Unlike the PCs, who let ideology and cuts dictate their pandemic planning, the Manitoba NDP is focused on what’s best for the health of Manitobans.”

» Winnipeg Free Press