From tomorrow (Thursday), visitors and staff at St Mary’s Hospital are no longer required to wear face masks as the Government drops the COVID alert level from 3 to 2.
These changes have been made in line with national guidance on the mandated use of face masks in healthcare settings as the number of COVID cases drops.
The Isle of Wight NHS Trust is asking those in oncology, haematology and chemotherapy departments to continue wearing a mask, however.
Visitors who are presenting with respiratory / COVID symptoms, are on a respiratory pathway, or are immunocompromised, should wear a face mask if this can be tolerated and deemed safe.
Juliet Pearce, Director of Nursing, Midwifery and AHPs, has said:
“Thank you to everyone who has followed the range of infection prevention and control guidance in place throughout the pandemic and more recently when we felt it necessary to reintroduce mask wearing on our sites. The actions have made a positive difference to our community.
“The Island’s level of COVID is currently low, however this guidance may change again at any time if there is a known or suspected outbreak of COVID, or a new variant emerges.”
Further information can be found at www.iow.nhs.uk/visiting.
About time this nonsense Stopped!
I’m sure you’ll still get the diehards who will keep on wearing their muzzles!
All hail the cult of COVID
Great! They’ve scrapped masks (which are of no use anyway) a year after everyone else did… beggars belief.
So if you are ever unfortunate enough to need major surgery you’d be happy for the surgeon and his team to perform the procedure without wearing masks?
No, thought not.
That argument is flawed as the reason for face masks, like the same for surgical gloves in a surgical environment is to mitigate BACTERIAL transfer! Bacteria are larger than viruses and hence masks are very effective at stopping them, viruses are smaller and a face mask offers no protection whatsoever.
As someone else has already pointed out, a surgical mask stops bacteria not viruses. They are two completely different things and covid is a virus not bacteria. That masks were ineffective at stopping a virus was well known and accepted before the flawed ‘science’ surrounding covid came along and then people just started believing everything they were told and ignoring the facts.
You would hope that hospitals, of all places, would know about the differences between bacteria and viruses but maybe it’s been more a case of ‘being seen to be doing something’ rather than being effective at stopping covid?
Absolute gibberish.
If you sneeze or cough without a mask, all of your your virus-infected snot is blasted halfway across the room. If you are wearing a mask, most of it is caught. Absolutely nothing to do with the size of the virus, everything to to with the nasal effluent that contains them.
In any case. Who am I to believe with regard to the effectiveness of wearing face masks? Hospital staff or some ranty Karen like you?
Sticking a bit of dirty paper on your face never had any purpose from day one, odd how people were fooled into doing it, however for some people it may have given a false sense of security.
Yes, it made me feel ill watching people continually touching their dirty face nappies then touching everything else around them, then throwing them on the floor for someone else to pick up. If covid had been as bad as they said it was we’d have been in big trouble.
The requirement to wear one wasn’t being enforced anyway, even half the staff weren’t using them.
Face coverings are still required in Winchester and Basingstoke hospitals, and on public transport and all shops, bars, restaurants and the Cathedral. In Winchester, two and a half years after the lockdown started, it’s still Hands Face Space, Work from home, save lives, protect the NHS. This Covid farce will carry on indefinately.