In response to increased respiratory illness activity across the province, Health P.E.I. is implementing a masking policy in its facilities starting Friday.
Members of the public will be asked to wear a mask when within two metres of a patient. Masking will also be encouraged in hallways of acute care settings.
Health P.E.I. said in a release that the move is for continued patient safety.
Comments closedIn March 2025, the Province dropped its health-care mask requirement. DoNoHarm BC, an organization advocating for it to be reinstated, had been hoping that they would do so once respiratory illness season started last fall.
“We watched other provinces reenact these seasonal mask mandates, and waited and waited,” Beth Campbell Duke, a science educator, told Daily Hive. “We had a letter-writing campaign, and still there was no response.”
While people who are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed are most at risk, she said that it poses a risk to everyone because no one knows how COVID-19 infection could impact them.
Comments closedFebruary 12, 2026 (British Columbia, Canada) – Independent public health groups in BC are calling on policy-makers to reinstate and improve mask requirements in medical settings. The call comes amidst multiple recent influenza and COVID-19 outbreaks in healthcare, following a winter punctuated by “unprecedented” ER closures and staff shortages, as well as massive measles outbreaks and a prolonged COVID wave across the border.
Comments closedNationally, we are seeing very high levels of influenza and, again, a growing wave of COVID-19 infections. A new variant of influenza A H3N2 called subclade K is driving some of this epidemic. Subclade K has already appeared in Japan and Europe and is more severe, especially in the elderly and very young.
Last week, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported 39,945 hospital admissions, up from 33,301 admissions the week before. While numbers have varied some week to week, they have been relatively high. There have been 19 pediatric deaths so far this season. The CDC estimates that there have been at least 15,000,000 illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations, and 7,400 deaths from flu so far this season.
Comments closedThe Trump administration reinstated on Tuesday hundreds of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who had been placed on administrative leave in April.
The employees are all staff members of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a C.D.C. unit charged with preventing work-related injuries.
“This moment belongs to every single person who refused to stay silent,” said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH and the vice president of an American Federation of Government Employees union local that represents C.D.C. employees.
Comments closedSurgical face masks provide inadequate protection against flu-like illnesses including Covid, and should be replaced by respirator-level masks – worn every time doctors and nurses are face to face with a patient, according to a group of experts urging changes to World Health Organization guidelines.
There is “no rational justification remaining for prioritising or using” the surgical masks that are ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics globally, given their “inadequate protection against airborne pathogens”, they said in a letter to WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“There is even less justification for allowing healthcare workers to wear no face covering at all,” they said.
Comments closedNova Scotia Health says masking is required throughout all its facilities beginning Thursday.
However, the health authority says masks are not required in:
The Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de l’Outaouais has decided to reinstate mandatory mask wearing upon entry into its care facilities.
Starting on Tuesday, wearing a mask is mandatory in hospital centres, including the outpatient ward, the Pierre-Janet mental health hospital (including units 5 and 6 of the juvenile wing), the Physical rehabilitation centre, La RessourSe, residential and long-term care centres and seniors’ homes and alternative housing.
Comments closedOntario wrote off more than one billion items of personal protective equipment at a cost of $1.4 billion since 2021, the province’s auditor general found.
Shelley Spence found the province continues to purchase masks, gowns and other protective gear at the same levels as the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, despite significantly declining demand.
“We found that expired products began to accumulate in the provincial stockpile as some of the products purchased during the pandemic fell short of desired quality standards and were not used,” Spence wrote in her annual report.
Comments closedUniversity Health Network (UHN) has announced a new requirement for staff, patients and visitors to wear a mask when inside its facilities.
Masks must be worn in all UHN facilities, including Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre as of Tuesday, Nov. 18.
All staff, patients and visitors will be expected to wear a mask in physician offices, waiting rooms for clinics, the emergency department and other outpatient clinical areas. Patients and staff must also wear a mask when delivering or receiving direct care, or when staff are closely interacting with patients in inpatient, outpatient and emergency clinical areas.
Comments closedA temporary mask mandate is coming back to Newfoundland and Labrador’s hospitals and long-term care facilities, and one doctor says the driving force is two-fold — a rise in COVID-19 cases and the availability of vaccines.
On Wednesday, Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services announced it was temporarily bringing back mandatory masking in clinical settings effective Monday. The release cited an increase in infectious diseases circulating.
“The timing of the mask requirement was a little bit deliberate to coincide with the timing of the COVID-19 and influenza vaccine campaigns,” Dr. Natalie Bridger, an infectious disease specialist, told CBC Radio’s The St. John’s Morning Show.
Comments closedThe Jewish General Hospital has reinstated a mask mandate for medical staff as the flu season has begun much earlier than usual this year, prompting fears that some elderly and vulnerable individuals might not get their vaccines on time.
“It’s not a bad thing to reinstate wearing masks in a hospital because you have sick people by default and you have high-risk patients,” Dr. Karl Weiss, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Jewish General, told The Gazette.
Comments closedMandatory masking is back at health facilities across Prince Edward Island as public health officials work to reduce the spread of respiratory illnesses.
The newest numbers from Canada’s respiratory virus surveillance report show that during the week ending Oct. 4, COVID-19 activity was increasing on the Island, with about 20 per cent of tests coming back positive. Nationally, the average was under 10 per cent.
Comments closedOfficials with Health P.E.I. say people will have to wear masks inside all of the provincial health authority’s facilities beginning next week.
The policy is being put in place in response to the growing presence of respiratory illnesses on the Island.
Lara MacMurdo, director of occupational health, safety and wellness with Health P.E.I., said rates of respiratory illness are often higher this time of year.
Comments closed(Quebec) François Legault’s new priority, the theme of “law and order”, will be on the agenda at his party’s convention next week. The CAQ wants, for example, to ban “masked” demonstrations and encampments in public or private places.
This is one of the proposals that will be debated during this party meeting in Gatineau, on September 27 and 28.
Comments closedHorizon Health Network has reintroduced mandatory masking in all patient-facing clinical areas in all of its facilities, starting Wednesday, citing a rise in respiratory virus activity.
All health-care workers, patients, social visitors, and designated support people will be required to wear a medical grade face mask, also known as a surgical or procedure mask, at all times in all inpatient units, outpatient/ambulatory care clinics and emergency departments, and any other clinical setting, including waiting areas.
“With this upward trend, and knowing this time of year historically leads to further increase of viral transmission, Horizon is taking a proactive and precautionary measure,” the regional health authority said in a news release Tuesday.
Comments closedMasks are back for British Columbia’s health-care sector.
On Wednesday the province said it had reintroduced masking requirements for all health-care workers, volunteers, contractors, patients and visitors.
The masking requirements kicked off on Monday and will last for the duration of respiratory season, which usually ends once the weather improves in the spring.
Masks will be required “in areas where patients are actively receiving care, except when eating and/or drinking,” the Health Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
Comments closedVICTORIA – Medical masks are again required in British Columbia health-care facilities as provincial authorities say cases of respiratory illness are rising.
A statement from B.C.’s Health Ministry says workers, volunteers and visitors in facilities operated by provincial health authorities must wear masks in areas where patients are receiving care in order to prevent the spread of the flu, RSV and COVID-19.
The requirement spans hospitals, long-term care and assisted living facilities, outpatient clinics and ambulatory care settings, and it’s expected to remain in effect until the risk of illness decreases, likely in the spring.
Comments closed
