Demand CDC and HICPAC Require Airborne Precautions in Healthcare Settings

On August 22nd, community members unanimously urged the CDC's HICPAC members to recognize airborne transmission of SARS-2 and to require airborne precautions that include respirators, ventilation, and filtration in healthcare settings.

Today, I am joining ActionCareEquity.org and these community members who spoke during CDC's HICPAC public comment to emphasize the urgency of recognizing airborne transmission and to require airborne precautions in healthcare settings to save lives, prevent growing rates of long covid, and create safer conditions to access healthcare.  

Lives should not be harmed in healthcare settings, lives should be saved. Mask requirements in healthcare settings during an ongoing airborne pandemic should be the baseline of care, anything less is an exercise in negligence. People are dying tragic deaths from hospital acquired infection of SARS-2 that could have been prevented with mask requirements. HICPAC must recognize that SARS-2 is airborne and that airborne precautions such as respirators and improved filtration and ventilation systems are necessary to prevent and reduce transmission of SARS-2 and other airborne viruses.

And let's be clear, we have lost and continue to lose a tragic number of healthcare workers due to death and long covid from hospital acquired infections of SARS-2, requiring masks will help our healthcare workers stay safer and help address critical staffing shortages which is reducing the overall baseline of care and is leading to a healthcare collapse. In closing: You are the CDC, what is preventing you from protecting patients and healthcare workers in healthcare settings? What is preventing you from requiring masking, ventilation, and filtration to save lives. What is preventing you from doing your job of controlling and preventing disease?

Act quickly, our health and lives are depending on the requirement of airborne precautions in healthcare settings.

Thank you.

Letter Campaign by
Joaquín Beltrán
Los Angeles, California
Sponsored by