Petition Welsh Government to take action to protect people from airborne infections in health care settings
* Improve air quality in health & social care settings through addressing ventilation, air filtration and sterilisation;
* Reintroduce routine mask-wearing in those settings (as per WHO recommendation 20 Dec 2023), particularly respiratory masks ;
* Reintroduce routine Covid testing- it is asymptomatic;
* Ensure staff manuals fully cover preventing airborne infection;
* Provide public health information on the use of respiratory masks & HEPA air filtration against airborne infections.
More details
Infections like Covid, flu, RSV, measles & TB are spread by inhaling tiny airborne aerosols hanging in the air like smoke. Key ways to prevent it are to improve air quality & wear well-fitting respiratory masks. Reinfection increases risk of long-term serious damage potentially for anyone, to brain, heart, immune system, etc. Care workers top the long Covid league. Repeated illness & job loss put avoidable pressure on services. The rate of hospital acquired Covid infection has been shown to be higher than in the community. Clinically vulnerable people often must use care but cancel essential health appointments. Transmission is often asymptomatic. Covid isn’t seasonal. Routine testing is thus essential. There are many tools to protect health. Only one is being used: vaccination – unavailable to many, including some clinically vulnerable people.
We have:
*met and corresponded with lead officials on masking, ventilation, vaccination and clinical risk
* submitted FoI requests
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At 10,000 signatures...
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