Several Massachusetts hospitals including Mass General Brigham, Cambridge Health Alliance and Baystate Health recently released new masking policies for staff, visitors, and patients to address a spike in cases of respiratory illnesses from flu, RSV, and COVID-19. As a reminder, nursing facilities should be monitoring community levels of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses and remain diligent in their infection control practices to mitigate the transmission of respiratory illness. Per DPH guidance on Organizational Policies and Procedures for Mitigating Respiratory Illness, mitigation measures to be included in a nursing facility’s infection prevention and control policies and procedures should include but are not limited to implementing masking for health care personnel (HCP) and visitors, and patients/residents as able, increasing ventilation within the facility, and offering respiratory vaccination clinics. Masking can include universal masking, which means having everyone wear a mask upon entry. Such an approach could be implemented facility-wide or could be targeted toward higher risk areas (e.g., units experiencing an outbreak and/or units providing care to severely immunocompromised individuals) based on a facility risk assessment. Below are several resources available to monitor respiratory illness levels.