As flu season approaches and COVID indicators gradually climb, several hospitals in eastern Ontario have decided to tighten masking rules.

As of Monday, masks will be mandatory at The Ottawa Hospital in all waiting rooms and clinical areas.

This comes following a similar move at Queensway Carleton Hospital which re-introduced masking August 28.

CHEO – eastern Ontario’s children’s hospital – says masking mandatory now on all units where clinical care’s provided.

At the Kingston Health Sciences Centre, masks are mandatory in the emergency department, children’s outpatient clinic and in its urgent care centre.

It also strongly recommends masking in clinical areas where patients are at high-risk, such as oncology, neonatal intensive care and dialysis units.

The most recent pandemic updates from Ottawa Public Health (OPH) show key COVID indicators are generally stable or rising at moderate to high levels.

But OPH warns the city’s hospitals are currently at a high risk from respiratory illnesses, just as they’d normally be in the middle of winter.