For more than two years now, CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) has pushed back against science, the public, HCWs, patients, Long Covid victims, & common sense to introduce better airborne protections for healthcare workers and patients
The last time the guidance for "Airborne, Contact, & Droplet Precautions" was updated was 2007
A lot has changed since then
We now know most diseases are transmitted "through the air"
In fine aerosols
Not large "droplets"
And we face numerous airborne disease threats now
10 voting members of HICPAC determine the risk of airborne transmission to 345 million Americans & 42 million Canadians
Putting at risk every year:
~90% who will interact with healthcare in some fashion
I'm getting some nuclear medicine bone scans done this morning to look at the extent of my infections...
So I did a bit of research & learned Canada is a world leader in new production technology for Technetium, Tc-99m, the radioactive isotope used for 85% of scans worldwide
About 30 million scans per year
I knew Canada had been a major world supplier of radioactive imaging materials for years until the aging Chalk River nuclear facility was closed in 2018
So it became necessary to import the nuclear material from other countries