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← Return to Masks: How do you encourage people that they help?
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Masks: How do you encourage people that they help?
Post-COVID Recovery & COVID-19 | Last Active: Nov 28, 2020 | Replies (48)Comment receiving replies
My daughter, an ER nurse in Minneapolis, was here yesterday for an outdoor visit. She has been off work for 3 months due to her personal health risks, but is finally returning to a non-contact job tomorrow. However, she is closely involved with her union, so has been in daily contact with coworkers and management throughout her physical absence.
Now to get to the point - since the ENTIRE staff in the buildings, from cleaners to CEO, have been required to mask AT ALL TIMES, worker to worker and/or environmental transmission of Covid-19 has dropped by about 80 - 90%. These are not all brand new every shift N95 masks - those are for patient-facing staff - but rather surgical or cloth masks or N95 masks repeatedly sanitized and reused. Early in pandemic days, about an equal number of workers who never had patient contact were getting Covid as those who had regular contact - up to 100 people at a time were in quarantine. Right now, around 40-50 patient-facing personnel are out, but only 3 who never have patient contact. This is despite the fact that the still has many virus patients - and their Covid ICU continues to be above 50% capacity.
I encouraged her to get this information better quantified and get it to the department of health and the news outlets. So it appears that masks do help...
Sue
Replies to "My daughter, an ER nurse in Minneapolis, was here yesterday for an outdoor visit. She has..."
When I was at Mayo in Rochester a few weeks ago, I heard the same thing about the 80% - 90% drop in staff COVID19 cases when masks were required. The staff who are in direct contact with patients are also wearing clear protective eyewear, even over their own eyeglasses as an added layer of protection.
On a side note - I had to make an in-person bank transaction on Friday. The bank door was locked, and so I was met by a masked bank employee -in this instance, it was a small branch office so it was the office manager - who unlocked the door, and had me give my name and phone number when I entered. I was the only customer in the lobby, and I learned that it was for contact tracing if needed. After I completed my business, I thanked her for the added protection. I could not see her face that was hidden behind the mask, but her reaction indicated to me that she had never been thanked before!
@sueinmn, Sue, glad that you and your daughter got in a person-to-person visit!
Thank you for sharing the mask wearing information being implemented at her hospital. I hope she will act on your suggestion to further share this information with the dept. of health and news outlets. This type of information could prove so helpful to others if more widely distributed. Has this information helped you feel more confident about her personal safety as she returns to work?
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That is really great news @sueinmn. Thank you for sharing. Hopefully the data/information can be shared outside to the media to encourage people to wear masks.