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Demonstrates that removing continuous masking does not increase healthcare-associated acute respiratory infections in hospitals, suggesting safety of such policies.
Whether continuous masking prevents healthcare-associated acute respiratory infections (HA-ARI) remains uncertain. We demonstrate that discontinuing continuous masking policies in 18 acute care facilities in Ontario was not associated with an increase in the incidence of HA-ARIs in hospitalized patients, or with ARI outbreak activity over two consecutive ARI seasons.
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Scheier et al. (2026) studied this question.
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