Liz Borkowski
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lizborkowski.bsky.social
Liz Borkowski
@lizborkowski.bsky.social
2.7K followers 1.2K following 280 posts
Public health researcher at George Washington University (Jacobs Institute of Women's Health), managing editor of Women's Health Issues. She/her, views are my own.
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lizborkowski.bsky.social
I appreciate Stone & Feinberg pointing out that the absence of peak COVID precautions like widespread use of N95s and HEPA filters makes healthcare settings more dangerous for immunocompromised patients and staff, including those of us with long COVID.
www.statnews.com/2025/10/30/c...
Having unvaccinated personnel in a health care setting is incredibly disruptive and dangerous. They pose a significant risk to immunocompromised individuals, like patients with cancer or organ transplants, who make frequent doctor’s visits for treatment and monitoring. This issue is not just theoretical; it is very personal to us. One of us is immunocompromised and has good reason to worry — the death rate from hospital-acquired Covid is about 21%. A number of people have been so worried about catching Covid-19 in their physician’s office or hospital that they have delayed care. One of us is experiencing that concern now, reducing visits to a minimum and opting for telehealth appointments as much as possible. Two years ago, health care was safer in some ways than it is now. Health care workers were vaccinated. Everyone wore masks in clinical settings, many of them N-95 respirators rather than the less protective baggy blue surgical masks currently in vogue. And HEPA units that filter the air were often running in examination rooms. Now, workers and patients alike go unmasked and those HEPA units stand as silently as sentinels in disbelief. We need to go back to the multi-layered approach of infection prevention. Now, not only are there no HEPA air-purifying filters running, and generally no masks, but even we feel uncomfortable asking for those basic protections from infection — and we’re physicians! Imagine how intimidated regular patients must feel. Because hospitals and medical offices are not as safe as they were earlier in the pandemic, and fewer people are taking precautions, making sure that all workers in health care settings are vaccinated has become more critical.
October 31, 2025 at 3:21 PM