Please join me in asking the State of New Jersey to revive the mask mandate in healthcare settings. New Jersey just ended its mandate with no real warning.

Please call the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) Commissioner’s Office to say you support the mask mandate in healthcare settings and want it back in place.

• NJDOH Commissioner’s Office: (609) 292-7837. All calls are appreciated and it’s especially important to encourage any NJ healthcare providers and staff you know to call in and voice their support.

Senior citizens, people with chronic conditions, and young children without fully-developed immune systems are particularly susceptible to complications from illnesses like COVID-19, flu, and RSV. These same groups tend to need to visit healthcare facilities frequently. With mask mandates removed from medical facilities, it will expose vulnerable people to a far greater risk of getting sick in settings (doctor’s offices, hospitals, therapeutic centers, etc.) that they cannot reasonably avoid. People should not be exposed to COVID-19, flu, RSV, and more while trying to improve their health!

Critically, an end to the healthcare mask mandate in New Jersey means that doctors, nurses, technicians, and other staff would not be required to wear masks in healthcare settings. It also increases the risk of patients infecting one another. An infected person could be in a small exam room before you and in the waiting room with you or before you. Asymptomatic people in these settings are a huge concern, since they make up a large portion of coronavirus transmission.

This matters for seniors, people with chronic conditions, young children with developing immune systems, and caretakers, but really everyone should be concerned and advocate for healthcare masking to continue. Why, you ask?

• Do you want to sit in an emergency room amongst unmasked people for hours as you wait to be seen?
• Do you want to take your child to urgent care with a broken bone and have them contract COVID-19, RSV, flu, or another contagious disease while there?
• Do you want to have surgery at a hospital and have to stay and recover amongst unmasked patients, doctors, nurses, staff, and visitors?
• Do you want to go to a dermatology appointment to have a mole on your face evaluated and take your mask off in a room where no one else has had a mask on?

Remember, these places aren’t testing people at the door, so the best tool we have to prevent infection and transmission is masking! Plus, even mild coronavirus infections could lead to debilitating Long COVID, a chronic illness that can last years after the original infection and can cause persistent symptoms in every system of the body. Most Long COVID patients cannot find effective treatment, as research is still in its infancy. Moreover, even if you’ve already had COVID-19, there’s a growing recognition that reinfections could worsen your long-term health.

It's critical that we act to protect vulnerable New Jerseyans by reviving a statewide mask mandate in place in healthcare settings.

Again, please don’t stop at signing this petition. Make sure you also call the office of New Jersey Department of Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli at (609) 292-7837 and tell NJDOH that you support keeping the mask mandate in place in New Jersey healthcare settings!