Modeling the impact of health care worker masking to reduce nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission under varying adherence, prevalence, and transmission settings.
Masking by HCWs is an effective way to reduce nosocomial transmission at all levels of mask effectiveness and adherence. Increases in adherence to a masking policy can provide a small but important impact. Universal HCW masking policies are most impactful should policymakers wish to target HCW infections. The more transmissible a variant in circulation is, the more impactful HCW masking is for reducing infections. Policymakers should consider implementing masking at the point when community prevalence is optimum for maximum impact.
Authors
- Julie V. Robotham (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2515-4084)
- James Stimson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1855-6229)
- Timothy Whiteley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4990-4644)
- Stephanie Evans (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2345-5249)
- Colin Stewart Brown (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4776-3403)
Institutions
- National Security Agency (US)
- National Institute for Health and Care Research (GB)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- UK Health Security Agency (GB)
- Imperial College London (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology
- Published
- 2025-06-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2025.78
- Primary Topic
- Infection Control and Ventilation
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Johns Hopkins University
- National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit
- National Institute for Health and Care Research
- Imperial College London
- University of Oxford