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Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told Times Radio this morning that he expected people to have to carry on wearing masks in hospitals even after 19 July, when the government plans to stop them being compulsory in England for public transport and shops. She said:
We haven’t seen what the plans are for hospitals but the likelihood is that we will want to make it as safe as possible for everybody.
And the only way to do that will be to maintain the hand hygiene, the social distancing and mask wearing within a hospital.
Ministers find it hard to get through an interview at the moment without being asked what their personal approach to wearing a face covering will be after 19 July, when the government plans to stop making them compulsory for public transport and shops. This is what Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, said when asked about this on Sky News this morning.
Personally, I use the tube a lot in London, and I would probably wear a mask in that context, on the tube, on public transport.
That’s a personal view, it’s not something I would mandate, or necessarily dictate to other people.
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