Three of the healthcare industry’s biggest stakeholder groups are uniting to urge the public to wear masks to help stem COVID-19’s spread.
The American hospital, nurses and medical association issued their joint call on Monday in open letter. Their public plea comes amid spikes in coronavirus cases in states such as Texas and Florida, with residents in both recently filing lawsuits to quash government mask mandates.
“After months of physical distancing and staying at home, infections and deaths began to decline. But in the weeks since states began reopening, some of the steps that were critical to the progress we made were too quickly abandoned,” the three healthcare trade groups wrote in the July 6 open letter. “This is why as physicians, nurses, hospital and health system leaders, researchers and public health experts, we are urging the American public to take the simple steps we know will help stop the spread of the virus: wearing a face mask, maintaining physical distancing, and washing hands,” they added later.
In making their case, the letter writers noted that intensive care units in some geographies are nearing capacity, while providers are still plagued by dire shortages of personal protection equipment. Top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, MD, recently advised Congress that new daily cases could climb to 100,000. Taking simple steps will help put the U.S. back on the right path, they advised.
“The toll of this pandemic is already staggering, and it will take many more months, perhaps years, to truly understand its impact on our country and our way of life,” the groups wrote. “But what is certain—and what the science and evidence are telling us—is that COVID-19 is not behind us and we must resist confusing reopening with returning to normalcy. Doing so will escalate this crisis and result in more suffering and death."
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.