How it started… how it's going. pic.twitter.com/9PMJWUqzT3

— Aaron Ginn (@aginnt) April 11, 2023

In a world moving on from the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and medical offices have been the last bastions of mandatory masking. But new research finds that in communities where pandemic precautions have been largely abandoned, mask mandates in healthcare settings do little to prevent coronavirus infections among patients. …

In the first 26 weeks, masking was required of all hospital visitors and healthcare workers. The researchers captured rates of infection among patients upon admission and rates of hospital-acquired coronavirus infections during that time. In-hospital infection rates were much lower that those detected at admission, but the two tracked up and down largely in tandem.

On June 2, 2022, masking became optional for healthcare workers and visitors in most wards of St. George’s. However, on cancer wards, in dialysis suites and intensive care units, and at medical admissions, the mask mandate stayed in place. That allowed those areas of the hospital to serve as the study’s control group.

For the next 14 weeks, researchers found that patients admitted to wards where masks were optional were no more likely to become infected inside the hospital than were patients in units where masking remained mandatory.

[In other words, masking had no impact on spread in either setting. Which is exactly the conclusion that the Cochrane meta-study reached as well, and at which the LA Times scoffed earlier. — Ed]