SEATTLE — Starting Monday the Washington State Health Department will no longer require face masks inside healthcare facilities.
The statewide mask order applied to anyone five years or older who was a patient or visitor to a healthcare facility.
UW Medicine campuses are among several healthcare systems and hospitals that signed a group statement to continue requiring masks at their discretion. The statement was coordinated by the NW Healthcare Resource Network.
A few of the other hospitals that will continue to require masks in some capacity include EvergreenHealth, Swedish Medical, Overlake Medical, Kaiser Permanente Washington and Seattle Children’s.
Hospitals and facilities that signed on with the consensus statement from the network are individually designating areas where masks will continue to be required after Monday.
"We are partially lifting the mask mandate, effective today, in public [and] common areas of the hospital and clinics, said Gestin Suttle, corporate communications manager for Overlake Medical Center and Clinics. "Masking in these areas will be optional. Masking will still be a requirement in most patient rooms when the patient is not alone, and in clinic exam rooms, procedure rooms and physical therapy gyms."
The following statement was provided by UW Medicine regarding the decision to continue mask requirements:
“UW Medicine will continue with its masking policy after April 3. Our plan is to continue that for at least three months to get a better sense of where COVID-19 is going. We will continue to consider risk assessments as well as state and federal guidance.”
It's recommended people call their doctor's offices or long-term care facilities they are visiting ahead of time to find out if those locations are also keeping the mask requirement.
Julia Barcott, an ICU nurse at Astria Toppenish in Yakima, told KING 5 the hospital is keeping mask requirements.
“From a nurses perspective, especially in the ER, it's not only protection for us, it's protection for others,” Barcott said. “Many of us have gotten sick or [have] been exposed to a number of things during our nursing career that these other people have not and they are much more susceptible.”
Barcott is the labor council chair for the Washington State Nurses Association (WSNA).
The WSNA is following the state health department’s recommendations. Barcott said the WSNA is also supportive of nurses choosing to continue wearing masks if they work in a hospital or other healthcare facility that’s dropping the requirement.
Barcott said she and her colleagues are preparing for pushback from visitors and patients about continued mask requirements.
“You would be surprised about the amount of people that we've gotten pushback from,” Barcott said. “I have had a patient who is dying and he’s insisting this can't possibly be happening because they don't think it's real.”