Take Action to Tell HICPAC/CDC to Follow the Science and Protect Health Care Workers and Patients!

Instructions: 

Use our suggested talking points to craft your written comments ahead of the August 22 HICPAC meeting. Submit them by email to hicpac@cdc.gov by August 22, 2024.

Talking points: 

Dear HICPAC Members and Staff: 

• As a member of the public, I have a vested interest in the work of your committee. The CDC’s infection control guidance is widely used by health care facilities across the country and other governments around the world. My safety and the safety of all patients and community members is impacted by your work. 

• I commend you for the steps you have already taken to improve transparency in your work and to add additional perspectives to both the committee and the Isolation Precautions Guideline Workgroup. 

• I urge you to ensure that updated guidance on health care infection control ensures that recommendations for infectious disease protections for health care workers and patients are based on the precautionary principle.  

• A precautionary approach would include assessments that evaluate the level of exposure, select appropriate control measures (including PPE) for each job, task, and location, and result in a written exposure control plan following the hierarchy of controls. Control measures like ventilation and respiratory protection must be prioritized.  

• The guidance must not include the more “flexible” approach that the CDC adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic, which enabled health care employers to avoid providing necessary protection for health care workers and patients, based on cost considerations. Employers failed to protect health care workers during the Covid-19 pandemic and we must not repeat the same mistakes.  

• Updated guidance must also fully recognize the science on aerosol/inhalation transmission of infectious diseases. Distance is not an acceptable surrogate for a robust exposure and risk assessment.  

• Surgical/medical masks do not provide respiratory protection against inhalation of infectious aerosols and cannot be used to protect health care workers from hazards in the air.  

• CDC’s flawed evidence review on N95 respirators and surgical mask effectiveness must be redone with input from scientific researchers and experts in respiratory protection, aerosol science, and occupational health. 

• I urge you to ensure that the health and safety of health care workers is prioritized in the updated guidance. As we learned in the Covid-19 pandemic, the health and safety of our communities are all inextricably linked. We must be better prepared to protect each other in the case of another public health emergency.