Alberta Health Services is dropping its mask mandate in most provincial hospitals next Monday..Dropping of the mandate also include continuing care and contracted sites, AHS said in a Thursday release.."This applies to all patients, families, and visitors at AHS facilities, as well as Alberta Precision Laboratories, Covenant Health, CapitalCare, and Carewest sites. It also applies to all AHS and contracted staff, including physicians, midwives, students, volunteers, and contractors," the statement reads.."The decision to rescind the current requirement for continuous masking was made based on a number of factors, including declining COVID-19 cases, testing positivity rate, wastewater data and hospital admission rates for respiratory illnesses in Alberta, as well as consultation with stakeholders including patients, families, advisory councils, clinicians and frontline managers.".AHS says some visitors should still proceed with caution.."AHS continues to encourage visitors or designated family support persons who have had respiratory symptoms to wait to visit loved ones until 10 days after symptom onset, and all visitors and support persons are recommended to mask when visiting symptomatic patients or residents," the statement says.
