Update on CATA's ongoing campaign around the current IPC guidelines for healthcare (11 February 2025)

Summary

Dr Barry Jones, Chair of CATA/CAPA and lead for BAPEN, gives an update on CATA's ongoing campaign to achieve meaningful changes to the current IPC guidelines for healthcare and beyond.

Content

The COVID-19 Airborne Transmission Alliance (CATA) continues to campaign for meaningful changes to four-nation Infection Prevention Control (IPC) guidance to reflect evidence heard in Module 3 of the UK Covid-19 public inquiry.

In our closing statement for Module 3, we included a demand for an interim recommendation from the inquiry in support of our position, supported by a number of other core participant groups. To this end, we wrote with the BMA, Long Covid and bereaved family groups to Baroness Hallett, Chair of the inquiry, to explain why an interim statement is so important, especially as we now know that the definitive module 3 report will not be published until spring 2026.

We have received a strong rebuttal from the inquiry stating that there will be no interim statement this year. CATA felt that the inquiry’s letter required a response questioning some of the reasoning but this led to an immediate further rebuttal. The inquiry will therefore not consider our request.

Meanwhile, IPC guidance continues to be predicated on a droplet paradigm of transmission with surgical masks for almost all clinical interactions except those deemed to be aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) – none of which is based on current scientific evidence. You can see the three letters attached.