The GPs who continue to mask: A mixed response on dropping of requirements – some GPs alarmed

My colleagues are going to maintain a strong encouragement for everybody to wear masks in clinical settings

Continued mask use should be normalised and encouraged now that the Government has ended COVID-19 restrictions, says RNZCGP medical director Luke Bradford.

The college has received a mixed response from GPs to the dropping of requirements, says Dr Bradford, who considers the move somewhat inevitable although also premature in winter.

Some GPs are quite alarmed by the removal of the necessity for masks and self-isolation, he says.

However, he adds: “We also want to avoid practices getting into open conflict with their patients and dissuading them from seeking care when… necessary.”

Practices can put in place other measures to keep patients safe, and the college has sent guidance to members recommending respiratory and non-respiratory patients continue to be separated where possible.

"A valuable learning from COVID was that we can avoid mixing infectious patients with non-infectious in the waiting rooms and we would recommend that continues,” Dr Bradford says.

In its guidance, the college says the decision to wear or remove masks in the consultation room will be up to the patient and the clinician.

Pinnacle medical director and specialist GP Jo Scott-Jones says, as far as he and many colleagues are concerned, “nothing has changed [regarding] the infectious disease control process in primary care settings”.

Dr Scott-Jones says the consensus among his colleagues is they don’t want to get COVID, and they don’t want their staff or patients to contract it either.

“They’re going to maintain a strong encouragement for everybody to wear masks in clinical settings,” he says.

“I think [RNZCGP’s] statement on this is really pragmatic and pretty clear and it aligns with what the Ministry of Health has said as well.”

In a statement to New Zealand Doctor Rata Aotearoa, health minister Ayesha Verrall says the public health risk from COVID-19 is now considered low compared to other stages of the pandemic and “it’s safe to remove the final requirements”. Dr Verrall, in the statement, advises people to continue wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID and other respiratory illnesses, and says in places where leadership can decide their own policies, staff should conduct a risk assessment to work out the most appropriate measures when providing treatment.

Te Whatu Ora’s website states it will gradually stop providing practices with PPE from 1 October and includes a list of when each item is due to be discontinued.

Dr Scott-Jones says it is an extra cost to provide hand sanitiser and masks in primary care environments but they are “a drop in the ocean for the actual costs of delivering care in the community”.

“It costs us to buy soap, it costs us to sterilise our surgical equipment, it costs us to provide masks for staff and patients. And that’s just the way a COVID-endemic world is,” he says.