Long Island hospitals not reinstating mask mandates amid rise in COVID cases, bucking trend upstate

Long Island hospital systems have no plans to reinstitute mandatory masking for patients, staff and visitors, bucking a trend at emergency health facilities upstate as COVID-19 rates rise again across New York, including in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

In recent weeks, amid rising COVID cases and hospitalizations, several hospital systems have brought back mask-wearing requirements.

They include the United Health Services of New York system, which includes UHS Wilson Medical Center, UHS Binghamton General Hospital, UHS Chenango Memorial Hospital and UHS Delaware Valley Hospital, all upstate, which reinstituted a mandatory masking policy for patients, visitors, employees, medical staff, volunteers, students and vendors on Aug. 23.

Also requiring masking is Auburn Community Hospital, located near Seneca Falls, and University Hospital in Syracuse, officials said.

Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center in California and UMass Memorial Medical Center in Massachusetts have also brought back mandatory masking.

But Long Island hospital systems are taking a cautious approach toward reinstituting mandatory masking — a policy the state ended in February.

As of Wednesday, the seven-day COVID-positive rolling average in Nassau County was 15% — identical to the statewide average — and 16% in Suffolk County, according to State Health Department data.

Dr. Peter Silver, senior vice president, chief quality officer and associate chief medical officer at Northwell Health, said while cases continue to increase, the severity of the disease at this point does not require mandatory masking.

"Most of the patients who are admitted to Northwell who are testing positive for COVID have COVID as an incidental finding," Silver said, explaining that these cases are often individuals coming to the hospital for reasons unrelated to the virus who subsequently test positive. "They are not being admitted for COVID, which means that it's still a relatively mild disease. Neither the number of patients in our hospitals, nor the severity of disease is pushing us to reinstate the mask mandate as of now."

Staffers, however, are required to wear masks in areas of high risk, including cancer units, transplant wards and among patients with suspected or confirmed COVID, a policy that went into effect in early August, Silver said.

"We're encouraging staff to wear masks in other areas where there's potential for COVID or where there's high turnover like emergency rooms, where so many patients come in and out every day and they may have mild viral illness or other things," he said. "We're encouraging staff but we're not requiring them."

Newsday polled Long Island's other major hospital systems and found a similar reluctance to bring back required masking.

Stony Brook Medicine said while it continued to require health care workers at each of its four hospitals to wear a mask when providing direct patient care, there was no such mandate for patients and visitors.

"Patients and visitors are encouraged to wear a mask when they are in our hospitals and facilities," Stony Brook said.

Catholic Health System, which operates six Long Island hospitals, said masking remained optional and that it would continue to follow the State Health Department's "guidance and timeline in terms of the mask policies for health care facilities."

In a statement, Health Department spokeswoman Alicia Biggs called masking in health care settings "an effective infection prevention strategy" but said the state's current policy allows health care facilities to "make determinations related to masking based on the status of the COVID-19 virus in their communities."

NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola and Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in Oceanside both said that while they continued to monitor COVID rates, there had been no policy changes to require masking.

More than three years after the pandemic began, there remains no scientific consensus on how much protection masks offer.

While laboratory studies show that masks — particularly N95s and KN95s — decrease the number of COVID-19 particles that enter the body, and lower the risk of infection, research has led to mixed findings on how much face coverings reduce the spread of the virus in communities, in part because levels of mask-wearing have varied over time and not everyone wears them correctly.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.