The People’s CDC is organizing a campaign calling for a public oversight of the actions of the CDS’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC).
“There is a dangerous new government policy being proposed which could harm healthcare workers and patients across the country. Instead of strengthening infection control policies in healthcare settings to protect workers and patients from infectious diseases, the CDC is planning future guidance which could lower healthcare infection control standards.
The CDC’s HICPAC advises the CDC on infection control policies, but committee meetings are subject to almost no public scrutiny and policies are made with minimal input from patients or healthcare workers. <…>
The proposal ignores the science of airborne virus transmission, flouts decades of advances in aerosol science, and dismisses advances in infection control that have been confirmed in the past three years of the pandemic. HICPAC should incorporate universal masking into standard precautions across healthcare settings and recommend the use of N95 respirators broadly. Instead, the most recent proposal specifically recommended that healthcare workers should only use surgical masks rather than fit-tested N95 respirators when caring for COVID-19 patients. This could endanger healthcare workers and patients, and contribute to outbreaks in healthcare settings.”
Join the action here.
— Sasha Kurlenkova