Amid this summer’s nationwide COVID surge, the CDC has acknowledged that COVID spreads year round, including in summer, and that emergence of new variants leads to unpredictable patterns of spread. However, the draft infection control guidance by CDC’s healthcare infection control practices advisory committee (HICPAC) continues to threaten rollbacks in the use of N95 respirators for aerosol-transmitted pathogens and further weaken isolation protocols and related guidance. Despite the demonstrated benefits of universal masking in healthcare settings in the ongoing COVID pandemic, HICPAC’s draft guidance fails to integrate this lesson to prevent avoidable healthcare-acquired infections.

Write to your elected officials and HICPAC asking them to make HICPAC accountable to the public and share your concerns about the need for universal masking and clear isolation protocols by August 22, 2024, at the latest.

Since many elected officials are campaigning for our votes this year, it’s prime time to write to your elected officials to insist HICPAC be made accountable to the public. You can use our Action Network campaign to simultaneously 1) write a public comment to CDC/HICPAC and 2) alert your elected officials that healthcare needs much stronger isolation and infection control precautions, including universal masking.

The letter template is also shared below, and you may borrow or modify it for your own healthcare infection control advocacy. We also highly recommend National Nurses United’s talking points to strengthen healthcare infection control broadly: https://act.nnu.org/sign/letter-action-feedback/

CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) is meeting August 22 about major revisions to infection control guidance. Though legally obliged to accept public comment, it has not made draft guidelines public or posted them to the Federal Register. I urge you to act to require HICPAC to open public comment for its August meeting and going forward.

Most importantly, HICPAC’s most recent draft guidelines would seriously weaken infection control, and prioritize healthcare profits over patient and healthcare worker health. Healthcare should not make us sick.

I urge you to press HICPAC to strengthen CDC infection control guidance in line with scientific data. HICPAC must establish universal masking in healthcare as a new standard of infection control across all settings for the following reasons:

• Many healthcare exposures to aerosol-transmitted infectious diseases (including COVID, measles, influenza and TB) are preventable through multiple mitigation measures including isolation procedures, universal masking, ventilation, and air purification.

• Many aerosol-transmitted pathogens are transmissible without symptoms and without predictable seasonality. Diagnosis and isolation may be delayed, leading to exposures that could have been prevented by universal masking.

• Well-fitting N95 respirators or better masks provide both protection for the wearer and source control. One-way masking has limited protection; masks should ideally be worn by all to reduce transmission. Hospitals should distribute N95 grade masks to visitors and staff.

• Universal masking protects patients when they cannot mask (such as infants, people with specific medical conditions and procedures involving the nose or mouth).

• When masking is only on request, people are unprotected in many shared spaces such as lobbies and waiting rooms.

In addition to universal masking, HICPAC must recommend layered mitigations in all types of healthcare facilities: higher HVAC standards, clear robust isolation protocols to separate infectious people from others – including by routinely testing staff and patients for COVID and other infectious diseases, isolating and cohorting infectious patients, and keeping staff with an active infection away from healthcare facilities and in-person patient contact.