Patients and visitors will no longer be required to wear face masks in dental offices, hospitals, physicians’ offices and other indoor health care and high-risk settings in California beginning April 3 per new guidance from the state Department of Public Health.
Workers, regardless of their vaccination status, also will not be required to wear face masks at work except for clinical staff when they are performing procedures on patients. In these situations, current Cal/OSHA and Dental Board of California infection control regulations will continue to apply as they did before the pandemic.
The new CDPH guidance on the use of face masks follows Gov. Gavin Newsom’s termination on Feb. 28 of California’s pandemic State of Emergency. Until the new guidance takes effect April 3, all workers, patients and visitors in health care and high-risk settings in California must continue to wear face masks as required since June 2020.
California’s new mask guidance is based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 Community Levels. CDPH states of the new guidance: “Health care facilities and other high-risk setting operators should develop and implement their own facility-specific plans based on their community, patient population, and other facility considerations incorporating CDPH and CDC recommendations.”
Patients, visitors and nonclinical workers always have the option to wear a face mask or respirator and cannot be prevented from doing so. CDPH recommends that any individual with respiratory symptoms, such as a cough, wear a mask when around others.
Dental practices must continue to screen patients for COVID-19 prior to and at their appointments in accordance with the exemption requirements of the aerosol transmissible disease regulation.
What the new masking guidance means for dental offices
Ahead of April 3, dental offices should communicate to employees the effective date of the new mask guidance to ensure all dental team members are aware of the relaxed recommendations and can communicate them effectively to patients. Practice owners can also convey that masking will not be required but will be “strongly recommended” when there is a high level of community spread of COVID-19 and a related impact on the health care system per the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Levels.
Beginning April 3, dental offices should remove from the patient waiting room, office entrance, practice website and other areas any signage stating face masks are required. To assure patients and visitors, dental practices may choose to post signage that communicates face masks are optional as of April 3 state guidance.
Face masks remain required in dental settings for personnel in these situations:
- Surgical masks must be worn by dentists and dental professionals when performing dental procedures in compliance with Cal/OSHA and the dental board’s infection control regulations.
- N95s must be worn during aerosol-generating procedures per Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Prevention Nonemergency Regulation. Employers must make respirators available to workers who are not exposed to AGPs but who want to wear them voluntarily.
Read the CDPH’s mask guidance that takes effect April 3. See CDA resources on PPE, infection control and COVID-19 screening and the article about Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Prevention Nonemergency Regulation, which replaced the emergency regulation and took effect Feb. 3.