HSA drops mask mandate and ban on COVID patients’ visitors
(CNS): It is no longer mandatory to wear masks in Health Services Authority facilities except for specific areas where patients are particularly vulnerable. The HSA has also finally lifted the ban on visitors of COVID-positive patients. However, anyone with COVID-19 or flu symptoms or those around patients at risk of COVID-19 infection must still wear a mask. They remain mandatory in the areas of dialysis, oncology, ICU/CCU, NICU and operating theatres, but the HSA said that generally, they are no longer necessary.
For more than three years, people admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 have not been allowed visitors in their rooms and have only been able to see their loved ones through video screens. However, under the new rules, patients who test positive for COVID can now have two visitors at a time.
Those individuals must wear masks provided by the hospital, adhere to strict hand hygiene and are not allowed to visit any other part of the hospital after leaving the COVID patient’s room. Changes to the policy are effective immediately, but patients may still choose to use the video screen.
Because of the strict rules throughout the pandemic, many families could not be with COVID-positive loved ones when they died. Those who spoke to CNS over the last few years described their extreme distress when they had to beg hospital staff to spend just a fleeting moment with their relatives at the end of their lives.
The HSA said the ban was lifted based on recommendations from the COVID-19 Taskforce as a result of updated science supported by local COVID trends and regional and international epidemiology.
To date, around 42 people have died in the Cayman Islands as a result of the virus, the last one in May, from around 35,000 documented cases. With mandatory reporting of test results no longer required, the hospital is now the only place where virus numbers are being counted. So far this year, fewer than 20 of all hospital admissions, including people being treated for unrelated causes, have tested positive for the virus each month.
More than 90% of the population has now been vaccinated, and thousands have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. As a result, immunity levels in the community remain high, and the low number of patients admitted to hospital as a result of COVID-19 indicates that its impact is no longer disruptive here.
The World Health Organization has declared that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is no longer a health emergency, though the pandemic is far from over. The WHO remains concerned that the virus, which has killed at least 20 million people worldwide, could still mutate into a deadly variant or one that causes a new surge. The threat of another pathogen emerging with even deadlier potential is constant, scientists have warned.
Long COVID, where people who recovered from the disease experience lingering and sometimes severe symptoms, is also causing concern for medical professionals. Scientific research from earlier this year indicates that at least 65 million people had developed long COVID by January of this year.
But three years after this was first documented, there is still no test that can diagnose someone with long COVID, and there are few treatments, given that people can present with some 200 different kinds of complaints.
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Category: Health, Medical Health
IT’S ABOUT TIME!!
What the hell is Covid-19?
said it before… no-one who is relatively healthy, under 70, who is vaxxed, will die from covid.
if at risk, get vaxxed.
You are 100% correct. Covid won’t kill them.
Unfortunately, the jab just might so stop being an idiot and telling people to get jabbed when it is now a proven scientific fact that the jab doesn’t prevent contracting the disease nor passing it on to others.
I don’t get it. We know covid kills (some people). But a person can visit a person sick with covid in hospital, then carry on with their day, go to the supermarket, go to work…all potentially passing on those germs to hundreds of people – some of whom might get really sick, might get long covid, or might die.
Covid patients should be kept in isolation.
What’s next? I go in for a routine visit and have to share a room with a covid positive patient thereby getting a hospital transmitted infection?
Who do I sue then?
don’t ask awkward questions!
pure blood here… so glad I didn’t take the clot shot.
It’s people like you who will catch covid and it will linger in your body until it eventually mutates and provides the next variant. Perhaps the next one will be truly deadly and wipe us all out. Just because of your stupid tin foil hat and selfishness.
caught covid after all the vaxxed ppl in the family and friends. feeling fine! though so many people i know dealing with serious vax side effects. ask most ladies you know. Messed with their cycles and ovaries like crazy!
go figure, natural immunity still 100% better than the clot shot!
To all the downvoters.
Hope you got your 5th and 6th boosters on schedule… oh you didnt?!?! wonder why that is?
Hypocrites.
Because the first 2 shots worked for me, dohdoh
I caught covid from my unvaccinated coworker. They went through hell for two weeks, meanwhile, me with two shots only had mild symptoms for two days and I was able to return to work after isolation.
They couldn’t taste food for a whole 2 months after.
Incorrectly call me a hypocrite, but in this case, I’m empirically warranted to call you a conspiracist fool.
Nonsense. You don’t know who or how you got it. Stop with the fairy tales.
“My first two shots worked”
…
“i caught covid”
anyone else see the problem here?! LOL!
1 year late, still work permit holders need to be vaccinated, Caymankind
wah wah wahhhh
Wish I could stop sodomizing my nose holes every morning with self testing also, dammit! I’m quite sure I know how it feels to be sick.
Who the hell had the bright idea to procure enough self tests for the entire CIG its authorities to self-test for the next 25 years? We have cases and cases of them left! *cry*
Glad common sense has finally prevailed.
Also can we ban those stupid flimsy blue fabric masks? If you are going to make people wear them, make sure they are N95
What about removing the vaccine mandate for work permit holders? An unvaccinated visitor can come here for several months, and there is not requirement for a booster for those that were jabbed two years ago.
I, a work permit holder, received my second jab in May 2021, with the vaccine designed for the initial strain. The protective benefits of that have surely long worn off, especially against new strains.
But a new permit holder still requires a vaccine?
It’s a CIG subliminal message. “ We really don’t want you here, so we are going to make you jump thru a few more hoops”.
As if there were a workforce ready to fill the jobs.
Why is it that HSA only responds to public pressure?
Asinine question
Not true. They respond to big monied pharmaceutical mandates. Time to completely reinvent the current medical bureacracy and system.
Right on. Power to the people. Screw big pharma dirtbags.
Stop watching stupid you tube videos.