Boston area hospitals again limit visitors because of rising COVID cases

Massachusetts hospitals are once again limiting visitors because of rising COVID-19 cases.

A memo from the state’s Department of Public Health sent to hospital leaders last week asked hospitals to discourage visitors until further notice because of the winter surge. Major hospitals in the Boston area have since tightened their visitor policies and returned to limits implemented earlier in the pandemic, including restrictions on number of guests and visiting hours.

Some Beth Israel Lahey Health hospitals had previously updated their individual policies to temporarily ban visitors, but today the health system announced it is no longer allowing visitors at any of its hospitals, except for in a few units, such as labor and delivery. Mass General Brigham, the commonwealth’s largest healthcare provider, announced a new policy today for all of its hospital facilities that limits inpatients to one visitor per day.

That policy puts Mass General Brigham hospitals in line with others in Boston that are also allowing just one visitor per day, including Boston Medical Center and Tufts Medical Center. Each hospital has its own exceptions for specific departments and circumstances, as well as other rules like limiting visiting hours.

Tom Sequist, chief medical officer for Mass General Brigham, said hospital officials discuss the visitor policy every day with input from various stakeholders, including patients, staff and state public health officials.

“One of the tensions that we are balancing in this particular scenario is the very real and true benefit of the connection to your friends and family that are visiting you — and we know that that improves your patient experience and can improve the care that you receive,” Sequist said. “And we have to balance that against the crowding and the desire to respond to the current phase of the pandemic.”

Earlier this week, the Massachusetts Nursing Association criticized the two-visitor policy then in place at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Jim McCarthy, a nurse in the post-anesthesia care unit at the Brigham and member of the MNA board of directors, said limiting to one visitor is not good enough. He is calling for the hospital to ban visitors entirely.

“It's not just for the staff. It's also for the patients, but it's for everybody, everyone's safety, that I feel that they really should need to cut back on having visitors in the hospital right now,” McCarthy said.

He is hoping that patients and their visitors follow and understand the new policies, even if they become even stricter.

“If people come in with the understanding that, ‘Hey, look, we're in a situation right now that we have a pandemic going on, and you're going to be limited as to who comes in to see you,’ most people, I think, are reasonable about that and understand the situation,” he said.

Jake Freudberg is a student at Tufts University.