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NEW JERSEY (WABC) -- Five New Jersey hospitals are reinforcing mask mandates due to a recent spike in COVID-19 cases. Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, Ocean University Medical Center in Brick, Southern Ocean Medical Center in Stafford, Carrier Clinic in Montgomery and Old Bridge Medical Center will be going back to their pandemic protocols in regards to mask-wearing. These five hospitals are run by Hackensack Meridian Health. New Jersey has seen a spike in COVID-related hospitalizations and 558 people were hospitalized this week.

Protect yourself against COVID-19 during fall travel. The CDC recommends everyone get the new COVID vaccine booster for fall 2023. Whatever you choose to do, your safest bet during travel is to wear an N95 mask, in combination with being vaccinated and boosted. These masks are designed to filter at least 95% of all airborne particles larger than 0.3 microns when worn correctly. To ensure you have enough N95 masks for your upcoming trip, we've found some options. They're approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is key, as there are many counterfeit N95 masks...

Liv Grace came down with respiratory infections three times over the course of four months. Each occurred after a visit to a medical provider in the Bay Area. Mx. Grace, 36, a writer who uses they/them pronouns, was infected with respiratory syncytial virus, which led to pneumonia, in December, after they were treated by a nurse wearing a surgical mask who complained about her children being ill with the virus. Mx. Grace got Covid after a visit to a cancer center for an infusion in February. And there was the pale, coughing phlebotomist who drew blood in April, just before...

Former President Donald Trump refused to wear a mask at the height of the COVID pandemic because it smudged his makeup, a former aide claims. Trump made the decision to forgo masks while visiting a Honeywell factory that produced the highly sought products in May 2020, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, in her new book, “Enough.” She wrote that the former president chose to wear a white mask for the event, and asked staffers what they thought of it. “I slowly shook my head,” Hutchinson writes. “The president pulled the...

New mask mandates have been imposed in health care facilities and other places in at least three states in recent days. COVID-19 hospitalizations have been rising since late summer, as new variants circulate. According to the latest data from the the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 20,538 hospital admissions in the week ending September 9, up 7.7 percent from the previous week. In an effort to help avert another "tripledemic" like last year when hospitals were overwhelmed with flu, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and coronavirus cases, the U.S. this month approved updated COVID-19 vaccines. The...

Some California college students are fighting to have mask mandates reinstated amid ongoing discussions around the return to some COVID-19 precautions. Last week, the Disabled Students Union (DSU) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), announced on Instagram that a proposed resolution titled "A Resolution to Mandate Masking, Weekly PCR testing, and Upcoming COVID-19 Vaccines, and to Improve Ventilation, and Reinstate the COVID-19 Task Force" failed to receive enough votes from the university's Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC). Some of the main aspects of the resolution proposed by the DSU included mask requirements for indoor and crowded outdoor spaces,...

Mask Up and Don’t Ask Question“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” ~ SolzhenitsynOur wise and benevolent liberal overlords, satisfied with how well their exploitation of the covid pandemic went three years ago, have decided to do it all over again since the nonconformists, for all their outrage, never got around to holding them accountable. Not for the lockdowns. Not for the censorship. Not for the toxic injections. Not for shoving infected patients into nursing homes....

… While some families never stopped masking, a recent Yahoo News/YouGov survey of 1,665 adults in the U.S. found that just 12% had practiced regular mask-wearing outside of the home over the previous week. … Dr. Zachary Hoy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Pediatrix in Nashville, says he doesn’t believe that families should overreact to the uptick in COVID-19 cases just yet, though it is worth monitoring. … If your family decides to return to masking, Amodio suggests including kids in any discussions. “Help them to understand the reasons behind the choice, and be sure to validate their emotions...

Some hospitals and hospital systems across the country are reinstating mask policies well over three years after the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Major mask mandates that dominated the country for months on end — including the controversial mask mandate for air travel, which the courts struck down — have come and gone. However, some entities, including schools and some workplaces, have brought them back, at least on a short-term basis, citing rising cases of the coronavirus.

A Tecumseh, Ont., native who brought awareness to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic by running a marathon while wearing a hospital gown is now dealing with the effects of long COVID. Evan Ubene, who's set to graduate with a master's in chemical engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, says last year he was also trying to highlight the need for proper personal protective equipment for health-care professionals. Wearing the hospital gown ended up breaking a Guinness World Record at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

A medical group issued a warning this week about wearing masks for respiratory viruses such as COVID-19, arguing that studies show they don't prevent their spread and instead violate patients' rights to informed consent. "As mask mandates are contrary to the fundamental medical principle of informed consent, all masking mandates currently in place must be rescinded, and no future mandates should be imposed," the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a longtime conservative-aligned medical group, said in a statement, likely responding to recent hospital mask mandates that were reimposed in August. The group made reference to research, including a recent...

Join Reason on YouTube and Facebook at 1 p.m. Eastern this Thursday for a discussion with Aaron Kheriaty, author of The New Abnormal about the persistent COVID mandates for K-12 schools, college campuses and health care settings.It's back-to-school season, and for some parts of the country, that means dealing with COVID restrictions again. Americans are no longer experiencing indefinite school closures or ubiquitous masking, but intermittent school closures, temporary mask mandates, and COVID vaccine requirements persist. Will it ever end? Or are we in "the new abnormal?" That's what Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist and fellow and director of the Program...

A recent uptick in COVID-19 cases, accompanied by the predictable hysterical media coverage, has spurred nationwide chatter about a possible return to pandemic restrictions, from school closures to mask mandates. This is not baseless supposition, as schools, universities, and hospital systems across the nation have recently reinstituted masking and quarantine requirements. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., recently reinstated a mask mandate in his Capitol Hill offices, while MSNBC pundit Mehdi Hassan has been working overtime to convince his audience that school closures did not actually harm children—a formidable task given the evidence refuting his claims. People living in hub cities and...

Esparto High School near Sacramento confirmed it canceled a game after it said six players tested positive for COVID-19. Two California high schools have confirmed that they canceled football games because of COVID-19 cases among students. Esparto High School near Sacramento confirmed that it canceled a game after it stated that six players tested positive for COVID-19. It also stated that multiple players were also injured and that it didn't have enough players for a game. This comes as there have been concerns that virus-related rules might be reimplemented in the coming months. ... Hundreds of miles away, a high...

Former White House chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that there were “a number of studies that show that masks actually do work” to stop the spread of COVID-19. Anchor Jon Karl said, “There’s a new study out that suggests that masks were actually not effective, at least not in a global sense, in containing the pandemic. What is your sense looking back at all of this? Did masks prove to be less effective than you anticipated?”

VIDEO A recent comprehensive study on the effectiveness of masks on stopping the spread of COVID has proven they have ZERO effect. However, liberals only follow THE Science that is convenient to them so White House Press Secretary KJP pledged that Joe Biden will be masking up around other people. Despite that pledge, just days later Biden arrived in India maskless and even handled and deep breathed his germs over the young daughter of the American Ambassador to India as you can see. Of course, if Biden did wear a mask, he would probably be the only person wearing it...

Amid a slight uptick in COVID-19 cases across the nation and the discovery of new variants, some schools have moved back to mask mandates for the start of the academic year. From August 20 to August 26, there was an increase of 15.7 percent in new COVID-19 hospitalizations when compared to the previous week, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an increase of 1.4 percent in positive tests for the same period. The CDC said that the BA.2.86. variant was found in samples from people traveling into the United States from Denmark and Israel and...

While a new subvariant is causing increasing hospitalizations across the country and we await the updated Covid-19 vaccines, now may be a good time to put your mask back on, doctors say. Especially in certain settings like on plane rides and trips on the subway. The percentage of people who said they wore a mask outside of their home in the U.S. decreased from about 57% in January 2022 to around 27% in January of 2023, according to data compiled by the Covid States Project.

Here we go again. First, Anthony Fauci pokes his head up to claim, against all evidence, that masks do stop COVID-19 after all. Then, right on cue, the White House announces that Fauci’s No. 1 fan, President Biden, will be “masking indoors” after the double-vaccinated, twice-boosted first lady contracted the virus for the third time in 13 months. Then Whoopi Goldberg, who once declared she was “boosted within an inch of your life,” goes missing from “The View” with her third bout of COVID. “As you can see, Whoopi is not here,” co-host Joy Behar said Tuesday. “She has COVID....

A city in California voted Wednesday to ban universal COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates, according to CBS News. Huntington Beach City Council Mayor Pro Tempore Gracey Van Der Mark introduced the motion Tuesday night at the meeting to ban the mandates, according to the motion. Huntington Beach, California’s city council voted 4-3 to ban universal mask mandates and vaccine mandates in the city, though the mandate ban excludes those who have tested positive for COVID-19, according to CBS News. COVID-19 mandates “unnecessarily limited the freedoms of the citizens of Huntington Beach — even those who were not around anyone who...