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NEW YORK (AP) – A new national study adds strong evidence that mask warrants can slow the spread of the coronavirus, and that allowing dining in restaurants can increase cases and deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the study on Friday.
“This is all very consistent,” CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said during a White House briefing on Friday. “You have a decrease in cases and deaths when you wear masks, and you have an increase in cases and deaths when you dine out in person.”
The study was published just as some states were revoking mask warrants and restaurant limits. Earlier this week, Texas became the largest state to lift its mask rule, joining a movement by many governors to ease restrictions on COVID-19 despite calls from health officials.
“This is solid work that clearly shows that in-person meals are one of the most important things to manage if you want to control the pandemic,” said William Hanage, a Harvard University expert on Dynamics. disease that was not involved in the study.
The new research builds on smaller studies from the CDC, including one that found that people in 10 states who were infected in July were more likely to have dined at a restaurant and another that found that warrants masks in 10 states were associated with reduced hospitalizations.
CDC researchers looked at U.S. counties placed under state-issued mask warrants and counties allowing restaurant meals – both inside and at tables outside. The study looked at data from March through December of last year.
Scientists found that mask warrants were associated with reduced transmission of coronaviruses and that improvements in new cases and deaths increased over time.
The reductions in growth rates ranged from half a percentage point to almost 2 percentage points. It may seem small, but the large number of people involved means the impact increases over time, experts have said.
“Each day that the growth rate declines, the cumulative effect – in terms of cases and deaths – adds up to be quite substantial,” said Gery Guy Jr., a CDC scientist who was the lead author of the study.
The restaurant’s reopening was not followed by a significant increase in cases and deaths in the first 40 days after the restrictions were lifted. But after that, there were increases of about 1 percentage point in the rate of growth of cases and – later – 2 to 3 percentage points in the rate of growth of deaths.
The delay could be because restaurants did not reopen immediately and many customers may have been reluctant to dine right after the restrictions were lifted, Guy said.
In addition, there is always a time lag between when people are infected and when they get sick, and longer until when they end up in the hospital and die. In the case of restaurant meals, a delay in deaths can also be caused by the fact that the diners themselves cannot die, but they could get infected and then pass it on to others who get sick and die, Hanage said.
“What happens in a restaurant doesn’t stay in a restaurant,” he says.
CDC officials stopped before saying meals there had to stop. But they said if restaurants open, they should take as many preventative measures as possible, such as promoting alfresco dining, having adequate indoor ventilation, masking employees and calling on customers to wear masks when not. not eat or drink.
The study had limitations. For example, the researchers attempted to make calculations that took into account other policies, such as banning mass gatherings or closing bars, that could influence case and death rates. But the authors acknowledged that they couldn’t account for all possible influences – such as the reopening of schools.
“It’s always very, very difficult to properly define cause-and-effect relationships,” Hanage said. “But when you take that along with all the other things we know about the virus, it confirms the message” of the value of wearing a mask and the danger of eating out, “he added.
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The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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