Wearing a mask will be required \u2014 temporarily \u2014 in all clinical areas in hospitals and health-care facilities, including long-term care, across Newfoundland and Labrador in a bid to cut down on respiratory infections this flu season, says the provincial health authority.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Wednesday, Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services announced the mandate is in place effective Monday at 8 a.m. NT.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese precautions are in place to help keep patients, clients, long-term care residents, visitors, staff and physicians safe and to help in the prevention and spread of infection,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n
The health authority said it will monitor epidemiology, hospitalizations and outbreaks, and will re-evaluate the mandate as late as March 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
NLHS also asked people to self-screen for COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses before they enter a health-care facility.<\/p>\n
The health authority brought in a temporary mask mandate this time last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, the province’s chief medical officer of health, is asking people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and influenza to help bring down case numbers.<\/p>\n Free COVID-19 and influenza vaccines<\/a> are available across the province.<\/p>\n Seven out of 10 people hospitalized with influenza in Newfoundland and Labrador last year weren’t vaccinated against it, and around two-thirds of them were over the age of 65.<\/p>\n According to the provincial respiratory dashboard, there are currently two COVID-19 hospitalizations and no influenza hospitalizations in the recent reporting period between Oct. 12 and Oct. 18.<\/p>\n Download our free CBC News app<\/a> to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click here to visit our landing page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wearing a mask will be required \u2014 temporarily \u2014 in all clinical areas in hospitals and health-care facilities,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-248235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}