The relaxation of the mask requirement in healthcare settings

On the 1st of June 2022, NHS England issued further guidance regarding the use of face masks in clinical settings. In what could be – optimistically – construed as further progress towards the Government’s ‘Living with covid’ goal, this latest official briefing directs hospitals and other care settings to end the requirement for staff, patients and visitors to wear face coverings in most wards and departments.

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Why the NHS must drop remaining restrictions and covid policies

We are now well over two years into the Covid pandemic and heading into summer. At this point the Government has long-since dropped all the Covid mandates and told the public that we must “learn to live with Covid”; hospitality venues, bars and theatres are full of people socialising and enjoying themselves; face masks are now a far rarer sight in shops and on public transport; and there are more smiles and spontaneous hugs being seen in public. 

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Can we rely on NIMS (National Immunisation Management Service) figures?

Changing the total population estimate results in large swings in the estimate of ‘case’ rates in the unvaccinated. Given the inability to be accurate within a few percentage points, and the uncertainty about whether the inaccuracies are overestimating or underestimating the total, the differences between populations is not as informative as the trend in rates within each of the populations.

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