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A clinical trial run by Stanford Medicine to study the use of Paxlovid to fight long COVID was rocked last week, when it was revealed that staff stopped masking around them. Multiple patients took to social media to say they had left the study as a result.
Masking is no longer mandated by the California Department of Public Health and Santa Clara County Public Health, where the trial was held. Nonetheless, patients expected clinical trial staff to continue masking around to reduce the chances of reinfection, or exposure to other infectious diseases.
“I knew that mask mandates were dropped, but I naively assumed that staff interacting with long COVID patients would still wear masks,” Olivia H., a patient in the trial who requested her full last name be withheld for privacy reasons, told The Daily Beast. “I was really disappointed when the research assistant and nurse entered my room without a mask on.”
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