Masks protect wearers and others from COVID-19: CDC

Wearing a face mask can also help protect yourself – not just others from you – from coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new CDC guidelines updated its previous claim that the main benefit of wearing a mask was to help prevent infected people from spreading the bug to others.

“Adopting universal masking policies can help avoid future lockdowns, especially when combined with other non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, hand hygiene and adequate ventilation,” said the CDC.

“The prevention benefit of masking is derived from the combination of source control and personal protection for the wearer of the mask,” he said.

“The relationship between source control and personal protection is likely complementary and possibly synergistic, so that individual benefits increase with the increasing use of community masks,” according to the agency.

“Studies show that fabric mask materials can also reduce user exposure to infectious droplets through filtration, including filtration of fine droplets and particles smaller than 10 microns,” he added. .

The CDC also cited the varying degrees of “relative filtration efficiency” provided by a variety of masks based on multiple studies, “in large part due to variation in experimental design and particle sizes analyzed.”

“Multiple layers of fabric with a higher number of threads have demonstrated superior performance compared to single layers of fabric with a lower number of threads, in some cases filtering out nearly 50% of fine particles less than 1 micron”, said the CDC said.

Certain materials, including polypropylene, can improve filtering efficiency by creating a kind of static electricity that improves the capture of charged particles, he said.

Others like silk “can help repel wet droplets and reduce wetting of the fabric and thus maintain breathability and comfort,” the agency added.

To block the exhaled virus, the CDC said, “Cloth masks not only effectively block most large droplets (i.e. 20 to 30 microns and larger), but they can also block the expiration of fine droplets and particles (also often called aerosols) smaller than 10 microns. “

He added that multi-layered fabric masks can both block up to 70% of fine droplets and limit the spread of those that are not captured.

“More than 80 percent blockage has been achieved in human experiments that have measured blockage of all respiratory droplets, with cloth masks in some studies working on par with surgical masks as barriers for source control.” , the agency said.