NEW ORDINANCE ON FACE MASKS

The Minister of Health Schillaci, who missed a prime opportunity to keep quiet, has published a new ordinance on the requirements to wear face masks in healthcare settings.

What do the new rules provide?

Face masks are mandatory:

1) for workers, users, and visitors of healthcare facilities and wards where vulnerable, elderly, or immunocompromised patients are located, facilities identified by the medical director,
2) for workers, users, and visitors of facilities where there are inpatients (hospitals, care homes, hospices, etc.),
3) in facilities other than those indicated in points 1) and 2) above, it will be up to the healthcare directorates to decide whether to impose the use of face masks on those presenting symptoms of respiratory conditions,
4) in parts of healthcare facilities that connect wards (corridors, stairways, lifts) or that are outside inpatient wards (entrance, café, etc.), it is not necessary to wear face masks and, therefore, they cannot be imposed even by medical directors,
5) in medical surgeries, the decision whether to impose face masks is left to general practitioners and primary care paediatricians.

Face masks are NOT mandatory, therefore:

a) in private consulting rooms; the difference between a clinic and a private consulting room is defined by the conduct of commercial activity and openness to the general public: a private consulting room is where individual or associated professional practice is conducted, accessed by appointment and not open to the general public; a clinic is a place for examination and care where medical activity is carried out on an organised and entrepreneurial basis and anyone can access it as a patient,
b) in specialist outpatient clinics where general practitioners (family doctors) or primary care paediatricians do not practice.

SWAB TESTS IN EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS

The decision whether to demand a swab test for admission to emergency departments is left to the discretion (more appropriately, one should say whim or arbitrariness) of medical directors and the regions. But the minister, bless him, notes that the requirement is no longer mandated by law.
The new rules apply from 1 May to 31 December 2023.
Diagnostic and healthcare treatments such as swab tests may only be made mandatory by virtue of a statutory provision. Article 32 of the Constitution states this. Therefore, administrative acts (provisions of medical directors and regional authorities) that, according to the minister, could impose swab tests are unlawful. In fact, administrative acts must comply with statutes and the Constitution.
The ordinance, tellingly, does not provide for any penalty for the breach of these demented muzzle mandates.
The minister did not see fit to look into the vast number of scientific studies showing that face masks are useless for preventing the spread of viruses and harmful to health.