NHS England Changes Mask Guidance: Progress But Not Good Enough

Some news since our Open Letter with over 8,850 signatures – including from over 2,000 Doctors and other healthcare professionals – went to the NHS Chief Executives to end the mask ‘requirement’ in healthcare settings:

NHS England has changed its mask guidance for healthcare settings – this IS progress – but not good enough, and here’s why…

Last week, NHS England issued further guidance regarding the use of face masks in clinical settings. It directs hospitals and other care settings to end the ‘requirement’ for staff, patients and visitors to wear face coverings in most wards and departments and – as such – is welcome news. 

There are, however, several aspects of this latest directive that indicate the war against masking in healthcare is not won, even in England.

Firstly, it is worrying that our national heath service – which should be all about evidence-based practice – perpetuates three flawed assumptions in this latest guidance:

1. Masks are effective – The real-world, more robust, evidence consistently concludes that face coverings achieve no meaningful reduction in the transmission of respiratory viruses.
    
2. Covid-19 deserves special treatment – Respiratory viruses have been on this earth longer than humans and there is now no justification for giving the SARS-CoV-2 virus special status; we must return to the pre-2020 mindset where mass masking was not even considered.
    
3. Masks are harmless interventions – There is a plethora of evidence that face coverings are associated with many physical, social and psychological harms, several of which are especially problematic in healthcare settings. Any ward or department considering imposing a mask requirement should always include these significant harms as a central part of their local risk assessments.

Secondly, the new guidance is shot through with woolly statements wide open to interpretation.

Ambiguous suggestions that mask requirements might be needed where there is a ‘local outbreak’, ‘suspected cluster transmission’ or the emergence of a ‘variant of concern’ seem designed to keep the way clear for future impositions of face coverings, and/or pass the buck to local hospitals.

Two years after the imposition of masking in English hospitals, it is most regrettable that NHS England and the authors of this latest guidance (Professor Stephen Powis and Duncan Barton) could not simply have signalled a clean break and consigned this unprecedented, poorly-evidenced, and ultimately failed policy to history.

Since they have chosen not to, by far the most likely outcome is that masking in English hospitals will now become a ‘postcode lottery’ based on the whims of local staff. 

Within hospitals themselves, we may well also get inter-departmental ‘caste systems,’ with higher status office workers mask-free but receptionists, security staff, porters, frontline workers and patients masked. 

Not only will all this further diminish the NHS’s reputation for scientific good sense, but it will create a pointless source of confrontation between staff and hospital users alike, just as masking has done on airlines.

The upshot is we must keep up the pressure to ensure that mass masking is permanently removed from our health services. 

You can help us do this by:

-→ Sending the UK Medical Freedom Alliance template letter to local hospitals, GP practices and health centres who are persisting with the mask ‘requirement,’ or to your local MP (see here and here)

-→ Looking out for Smile Free’s calls-to-action, which will include addressing the situation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, too