ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- Healthcare organizations are starting to loosen the rules on some COVID-19 policies.

CentraCare has announced plans to drop the mandatory masking requirement when inside their hospitals and clinics. CentraCare dropped the mandate on Sunday, April 2nd.

Dr. George Morris led CentraCare's COVID response. He says “CentraCare continues to put the health of our people – and our patients – at the forefront. While COVID-19 isn’t over, it’s changed drastically since it first started.

The health impacts are less severe and mortality rates are much lower. We are treating far fewer COVID-19 patients at our hospitals – and our employee infection rates are down.

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Because of these factors, we know we can safely scale back some of our COVID policies, like universal masking, and return to a pre-pandemic state.

We still have some protocols in place for employee masking – and our patients should continue to mask if they have any respiratory symptoms."

Anyone who still wishes to wear a mask in the clinics and hospitals is welcome to do so.

 


 

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