Keller @ Large: Is COVID finally over?
BOSTON - For the first time since March 2020, Tufts Medical Center has no COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital. Same for Boston Medical Center!
And for those who've longed to be free from COVID-era rules and mandates, the moment of liberation is at hand: On May 11, state and federal public health emergencies will expire, ending almost all of the rules which were put in place to slow COVID.
"We are no longer in an emergency," says Dr. Shira Doron, chief of Infection Control for Tufts Medical Center. She says that means it's OK to ease vaccine rules for travelers and drop mask mandates where they linger, even in healthcare facilities.
"We can learn from the experience of our colleagues across the country, the vast majority of whom have been without masks in healthcare, many of them for quite a few months now -- seven months - and not seeing any change," says Doron.
But Dr. Lara Jirmanus of Harvard Medical School says "COVID is still a serious threat in this country and around the world," and dropping masks in hospitals would put millions of us at risk. "Severely ill immunocompromised people, even after COVID vaccines and boosters, can still risk serious infection and death due to COVID, and for that reason, it is essential to try to prevent them from being exposed to COVID," she says.
That's why State Senate Elder Affairs Committee chair Pat Jehlen and her House counterpart have written to the state Department of Public Health urging reconsideration of their decision to drop the healthcare mask mandate next week.
"The Hippocratic oath says 'first, do no harm.'" notes Jehlen. "This is such a small intervention; it's something people are used to."
You can feel the frustration of Dr. Jirmanus and other skeptics of the ongoing phase-out of COVID-19 precautions. And that's nothing compared with the anxiety of the vulnerable who see mortal threat in the cascading fall of those public health dominoes.
But their concerns seem to stand little chance of slowing the rush toward pre-covid normalcy - for better, or for worse.