Masking could be a ‘positive legacy’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. Will it?

Infectious diseases specialists are hoping the practice of masking, which emerged as a response to the pandemic, will continue at certain times and in certain places

Even before the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic was no longer a “public health emergency of international concern” on Friday, many Canadians had already given up wearing masks as mandates lifted in most public places.

Although WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted Friday’s declaration “does not mean COVID-19 is over,” many people will likely interpret it that way, said Dr. Allison McGeer, infectious diseases specialist and microbiologist at Sinai Health Systems in Toronto.

“Truthfully, at least in Canada, most behaviour is already reflecting most people’s opinion that the pandemic is over,” McGeer said.

Still, infectious diseases specialists are hoping the practice of masking, which emerged in this country as a response to the pandemic, will continue at certain times and in certain places to help reduce the spread of not only COVID-19, but influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well.

Although most mask mandates have been lifted, some large hospitals continue to require masking in patient-care settings, which makes sense to Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

“In the ‘before times,’ which I think most of us can barely remember now, you’d be zooming around the hospital all over the place and people would have all sorts of symptoms,” Saxinger said.

“You’d be seeing someone for possible pneumonia, they’d be coughing and you would just walk into the room … So I think that there has been like a net shift in the willingness and proactiveness to using masks (in health care),” she said.

Dr. Fatima Kakkar, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal, said she also intends to keep masking when seeing patients.