Hopkins should have kept mask mandate

On April 24, Johns Hopkins Medicine became the last hospital system in Maryland to end its mask mandate for employees, patients and visitors (“Johns Hopkins ends mask mandate at medical facilities,” April 24). That leaves all Maryland hospitals in the position of inviting, if not guaranteeing, increases in hospital-acquired infections and, probably, unnecessary deaths.

In this relaxation of mask mandates, Hopkins and other Maryland hospitals are following the prevailing national policies, based on economics and optics, perhaps, but not science. As much as we would like it to be over, COVID is anything but. Several British dailies recently have called for a return to masking because of the increasing prevalence of the omicron subvariant XBB. 1.16, also called “Arcturus,” which has also run rampant during the past few months in the world’s most populous country, India, and made its way to the United States.

In recent years, Johns Hopkins University, a globally renowned research university along with its national and world leading hospitals, has reckoned with some unsavory aspects of its past, particularly its treatment of former cancer patient Henrietta Lacks and her family. Hopkins should be lauded for, albeit belatedly, addressing its past mistakes in its quest to do right by the Lacks family and the city of Baltimore. Hopkins has often led the way in health care in Charm City, throughout Maryland and well beyond. For its many vulnerable patients, including those with long COVID (nearly one in five American adults who have had COVID have long COVID symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), cancer or who are otherwise immunocompromised, as well as visitors and staff, the institution is now taking a back seat when it could and should be continuing to lead the way toward optimal health care.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hopkins shot to the forefront of tracking the prevalence of the infection. Now, I urge Johns Hopkins to follow the lead of some others and require masks in all hospitals and other care facilities at least through the end of 2023. Even without COVID, wearing masks to blunt the transmission of dangerous microbes, which are rife in hospitals and other centers of care, is sound health policy.

Evidence has shown that multiple airborne infections were diminished during the height of mask-wearing in the last few years. Leaders at Hopkins, please remember that your first charge is to “do no harm.” Rescind the mistaken end to the mask mandate.