Doctors call for the return of FFP2 masks in health sector

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“It is our concern, with this letter, to remind the medical profession in Austria of our top professional priority: protecting the health of our patients!” Thus begins an open letter addressed to the Austrian Medical Association. It was initiated by the physician Golda Schlaff and signed by 15 physicians. Among them are also proven COVID experts: Arschang Valipour, for example, Kathryn Hoffmann and Mariann Pavone-Gyöngyösi.

So what is the three-page letter about? First and foremost, the long-term consequences that a COVID-19 infection can cause. Too little information is given to patients about the risk, the tenor goes. “With COVID, it’s not the acute infection that’s the main problem; it’s the long-term consequences,” Schlaff says in an interview with the Kleine Zeitung. But the handling of scientific findings regarding COVID and long-term COVID, as well as “the handling of the pandemic and the management of the health crisis, is absolutely appalling,” the letter reads. It continues, “Covid-19 is not a common cold. It is not a flu-like infection. It is a systemic, vascular-damaging disease that spreads only through the respiratory route, via aerosols.”

Knowledge of the scientific facts
From the colleagues, the initiators of the letter demand debate and knowledge of the scientific facts because “empirically, it has unfortunately been shown that the majority of the medical profession in Austria is not at the current state of science.” For this reason, interdisciplinary training on COVID-19 should be mandatory. “A big problem we see diagnostics – especially when it comes to Long Covid,” Schlaff describes.

The trigger for this open letter was when the last preventive measures were lifted in hospitals and other health facilities, tells Schlaff. Preventative measures are now also demanded in the letter to the medical association. One of these measures, he says, is a comeback of FFP2 masks in healthcare facilities should infection rates rise again. Air filtration systems are also suggested, as is the reclassification of Covid-19 as a notifiable disease.