Patients and employees at University of Vermont Health Network’s three Vermont hospitals will no longer be required to wear masks in public spaces beginning April 12, the organization announced Thursday.
The change will affect the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin and Porter Medical Center in Middlebury.
Dartmouth Health also announced a rollback of its masking requirements for patients, visitors and staff at all of its affiliated offices effective April 10. That includes Mt. Ascutney Hospital in Windsor and the network’s flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, which is joining Dartmouth Health, is also doing away with mask requirements as of April 10, except for people with cold or flu-like symptoms.
Last month, Rutland Regional Medical Center did the same.
UVM Health Network hospital employees will be required to wear masks in patient rooms, in exam rooms and while providing direct patient care. But patients and visitors are no longer required to wear masks in those situations, the network said in a press release.
The network also removed Covid-19 visiting restrictions for most locations that did not have pre-pandemic rules, it said, with the exception of some high-risk clinical units such as dialysis clinics.
New York hospitals in the network will keep masking and visitation restrictions in place due to state regulations, according to the press release.
At a press conference, UVM Health Network President Dr. Stephen Leffler said the decision was made by a team of experts and clinicians based on scientific data and guidance. As Covid continues to evolve, he said, the network would continue to follow scientific recommendations.
The decisions have been criticized by the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights. In a press release, the organization said it opposed both networks’ loosening of Covid restrictions because of the potential for harm of Vermonters with disabilities, particularly people who are at high risk of severe complications from Covid.
“Institutions that choose to actively perpetuate harm to people with disabilities cannot claim a commitment to health equity, or that they value ending health disparities,” coalition President Sarah Launderville said in the release.
Wilda White, founder of mental health advocacy organization MadFreedom, said in the release that Vermont’s commitment to health equity was “nothing more than lip service” if facilities are allowed to abandon masking policies, “effectively deny(ing) equal access to healthcare for individuals who are vulnerable to infectious diseases such as Covid-19.”
Leffler said some protections remain in place for high-risk individuals, such as the mask mandate for staff providing patient care. He said that people who might be uncomfortable in waiting rooms without masking could wait in their car, and that staff who are exempt from the masking rules had been directed to wear a mask if a patient asks them to.
Anne Sosin, a health equity researcher at Dartmouth College, said lifting masking threatens to make health care facilities less safe.
“Even if we believe that COVID-19 infections are inevitable and pose a much lower risk to most in the population now, timing them with hospitalizations, surgeries and other healthcare visits is suboptimal at best and catastrophic at worst,” she wrote in an email.
She said some data suggests Covid infections acquired in health care settings have been common and have a higher mortality rate than ones acquired in the general community.
The coalition also pointed to the rate of long Covid — thousands of Vermonters, according to some estimates — as reason for protecting high-risk Vermonters.
Ylan Roy is a former early childhood educator who has been out of work for months due to long Covid. She described herself as a super athletic person and rower before she developed chest pain and other symptoms.
“The only way I can describe it right now (is) it’s not a body I know anymore,” she said.
Roy said she was surprised by the health networks’ decisions and wanted to know more about what evidence it was based on.
David Clauss, chief medical officer for the UVM Health Network, said at a press conference that the low rate of community transmission and less viral shed among people with prior Covid immunity contributed to the decision. He did not elaborate on the full decision-making process.
Roy said that she isn’t a proponent of masking for everyone in every situation, but it makes sense to her that people in medical centers are more likely to be ill or have Covid.
“If I’m not able to see my granddaughter when she has a runny nose, how hard is it to wear a mask at the hospital?” she said.
She said her plea is that “when you’re going into a building that has sick people in it,” wear a mask. “I’m not going to be able to go back to work if I keep getting Covid,” she said.
