Masking Policy Changes
Written by Jeremy Zafran on 1 May 2023
The Kateri Memorial Hospital Center is making some moves. Masks are no longer required when visiting long-term patients. In a joint announcement by the KMHC and KSCS, that the mandate decisions were effective immediately: Valerie Diabo is the Interim executive director of the KMHC:
“In some places our mask mandates are coming down. We’re very excite about that, our mask mandates have been in place for over 2 and half years within the hospital. Affected areas are our long-term care area: so, our residents; The Elder’s Lodge and at Assisted Living. We’ve all been wearing masks in that area for a longtime, and it’s going to be nice that our residents will be able to share a meal with their loved ones once again, have a smile on their face and see our staff smiling at them.”
The decision is in place for the KMHC, The Elder’s lodge and the KSCS Assisted Living Services and was approved by the Public Health Team. Dr Rachel Enoujican. Director professional services:
“This is definitely exciting news and a step towards normalcy and it’s a great time to do it given that a majority of our population have been vaccinated, at least 2 doses, and a good portion of them have the Covid infection at least once which gives them high-rate immunity, which is extremely protective also given the availability of antivirals, this would be a great time to start stepping back and bringing normalcy into the community.”
Policies are based on Quebec’s Ministry of Health and Social Services and Quebec’s Public Health department. Juanita Belanger, Infection Control at the KMHC:
“We’ve derived our policies and updated everything based on that, so we have a lot of information available for staff and also community organizations to help direct them with this change. We know that there are so many benefits to having the masks as we’ve seen throughout the pandemic but we also know that there are detriments in some ways, especially during long-term care environments we know that we have some people who rarely leave and who have being seeing people care for them with masks on for a very long time, so the benefit versus the risk was weighed and there seems to be much greater benefit to removing them at this point.”
The masking policy has also been lifted for the non-clinical areas of the hospital and KSCS, but remain mandatory in clinical areas and short-term care units, even the pharmacy. Anyone interested on wearing a mask, they are welcome to do so with the caveat that if you feel sick, you should avoid visiting those in the hospital until you feel better. Homecare staff will continue to be required to wear their protective masks.
