Last updated: Mar 25, 2025

Demands

1. Maintain healthcare mask requirements year-round. Prevention should be proactive, not reactive, especially as COVID-19 has increased over the summer months for three years straight. We’re also seeing an atypical late-season increase in influenza and a surge in measles, alongside other illnesses like norovirus, RSV, and potentially H5N1.
   
2. Provide clear direction to all health authorities on concrete steps to enact mask requirements to address reported gaps in implementation. This includes requiring hospital admin to direct managers on implementation; posting signage; making masks available; and designating staff members responsible for informing and monitoring staff, visitors, and patients.
   
3. Increase usage of N95-equivalent masks or better (a.k.a. respirators), which provide superior protection as the only masks rated to properly protect against airborne illnesses.  Clearly communicate the federal and international scientific consensus that COVID-19 is airborne, and use appropriate respiratory protection. Follow the European model in making N95-equivalent masks a default choice for high-risk settings, and ensure all who wish to wear a respirator (or request it of their healthcare providers) can do so.
   
4. Close gaps in existing rules. This includes requiring patients to mask (with reasonable exceptions and accommodations) and providing N95-equivalent masks for potential airborne illnesses; ensuring mask coverage in shared locations where patients must be, including foyers and hallways (where patients often need to wait); and directing private healthcare settings to meet the same minimum mask requirements as government-run facilities.

Quick Facts

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

• Patient safety: Gaps in infection control put patients at greater risk, particularly  in high-risk settings like ERs, cancer centres, children’s hospitals and long-term care. Hospital-acquired COVID-19 is at least 70 times more deadly than COVID contracted in the community, while a late influenza surge, measles warnings, and Canada’s first hospitalization from H5N1 underscore the rising risks from other communicable diseases.
  
• Worker protection: Healthcare workers face the highest rates of workplace COVID claims, while a single case of H5N1 potentially exposed 60 healthcare workers. Interior Health was recently fined over $270,000 for exposing workers to a noxious unknown hazard without recommended PPE, highlighting the need for improved communication around appropriate respiratory protection.
  
• Accessibility: Multiple polls show 85–91% of respondents must delay healthcare due to lack of safety measures. British Columbians have sent tens of thousands of messages so far calling for masks in healthcare – a particularly pressing need for Indigenous, racialized, disabled, 2SLBTQIA+ and lower-income communities, who continue to face disproportionate harm from illnesses like COVID-19.
  
• A necessary layer: Hand hygiene does not address transmission through the air. Up to 59% of COVID cases spread asymptomatically, meaning symptom checks alone are insufficient. While vaccination is vital, it doesn’t fully prevent COVID infections or long-term health impacts, and offers less protection for many immunocompromised people. Masks are a low-cost, high–impact safety tool that should be used alongside these other measures to help close the gaps.
  
• An evidence-based solution: Studies show resumption of staff masking is associated with a 33% decrease in hospital-onset respiratory viral infections, while N95 masks reduce exhaled viral load by 98%. A study demonstrated that upgrading to N95 masks in COVID wards reduced healthcare worker infections by up to 100%. A study on SARS-CoV-1 co-authored by BC’s current Provincial Health Officer likewise found that “Consistently wearing a mask…was protective for the nurses”, and that “[r]isk was lower with consistent use of a N95 mask than with consistent use of a surgical mask.” 
  
• Protecting our healthcare system and reducing costs: Preventing healthcare-acquired infections can help reduce surgery delays and longer, far costlier hospitalizations. It also avoids unnecessary staff shortages caused by acute or long-term illness. Canada’s Office of the Chief Science Advisor emphasizes that preventing COVID infection is also key to preventing Long COVID: a long-term condition that is not only life-altering for many COVID survivors, but causes profound impacts to health systems and economies. 

CURRENT RISKS IN BC

• BC continues to experience high rates of COVID-19 alongside high excess mortality. COVID-19 can cause not only acute illness or death, but delayed and long-term health impacts, with risks that multiply with each reinfection.
  
• BC has been home to Canada’s first human case of H5N1 avian influenza, in which a young person was hospitalized and dozens of healthcare workers were potentially exposed. Public health officials warn that there is potential for H5N1 to become another pandemic.
  
• BC has experienced multiple measles exposures, with cases surging across North America and worldwide. Measles is one of the most contagious airborne diseases in the world, and is known for causing “immune amnesia”, erasing existing immunity to other illnesses.
  
• Many British Columbians are not up-to-date on COVID vaccination, while BC’s failure to order the Novavax protein-based vaccine means some vulnerable people cannot get vaccinated at all. Experts are also sounding the alarm about low measles vaccination rates.
  
• There is currently no mandatory self-isolation period while sick with COVID-19, and people can return to work, school and social interactions while still COVID-positive and infectious. 
  
• Sick BC health workers may return to work while symptomatic, and some health authorities specifically discourage healthcare workers from testing themselves for COVID-19.
  
• Hospitals and long-term care facilities may keep COVID-positive patients in the same room as other people, and declaring an outbreak is discretionary.
  
• Access to COVID-19 treatments such as Paxlovid is restricted, leaving many high-risk people ineligible.
  
• BC has closed its four Long COVID clinics, to the consternation of doctors and patients.
  
• BC’s healthcare system is in crisis, with labour shortages that have led to well over a hundred ER closures last year in Interior Health alone.

Others Weigh In on Healthcare Masking

• Patients and healthcare workers across BC: Read personal stories from British Columbians about the reality of healthcare safety in BC, including patients alleging healthcare safety violations, and healthcare workers sharing concerns around workplace hazards or being harassed for wearing a mask.
  
• Over 29,000 petitioners: “Canadian hospitals need to maintain MASK mandates.” Find the petition here.
  
• 2,034 poll respondents (via a social media poll by a Vancouver science communicator and public health advocate): 85% of respondents state they are “avoiding or putting off non-emergency medical visits due to the removal of mask mandates in healthcare settings”. Find the poll here. 
  
• 450 clinically vulnerable people (via a poll by Clinically Vulnerable Families): 91% of respondents state they “have or would delay / cancel medical appointments due to high Covid risks”; many of the remaining 9% state they had no choice but to attend. Find the poll here.
  
• Kasari Govender (BC Human Rights Commissioner): “If there is one space that all vulnerable people should be able to rely on to prioritize their safety, it is in healthcare settings, including long term care facilities…[the] removal of masking directives in healthcare settings does not uphold a human rights centered approach to public health.” Read the full statement.
  
• Dr. Bonnie Henry et al. in a 2004 study of SARS-CoV-1: “Consistently wearing a mask (either surgical or particulate respirator type N95)…was protective for the nurses, and consistent use of the N95 mask was more protective than not wearing a mask. Risk was reduced by consistent use of a surgical mask, but not significantly. Risk was lower with consistent use of a N95 mask than with consistent use of a surgical mask.” Read the study.
  
• Protect our Province BC: “Not only does removing masking in healthcare settings make hospital-acquired (nosocomial) illness far more likely, it will result in the illness of far more healthcare workers which will further strain a medical system already near the breaking point.” Read the full statement and their open letter.
  
• Dr. Tara Moriarty (Associate Professor University of Toronto, Infectious Disease Research Laboratory, co-founder of COVID-19 Resources Canada): “Promoting the safety of people at higher risk from COVID in essential healthcare settings is not only desirable. It is required if institutions truly support equitable, accessible care that promotes health.” Read the full statement.
  
• David Osborn, BSc, CMIOSH, SpDipEM, Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner: “The World Health Organization continues to recommend universal masking policies in health and social care…[abandoning] universal masking…is viewed by some patients as playing ‘Russian roulette’ with their health.” Read the full statement.