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Wearing a mask – any mask – reduces the risk of coronavirus infection, but wearing a more fitted surgical mask, or layering a fabric mask over a surgical mask, can significantly increase protection for the wearer and others, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday.
New research from the agency shows that transmission of the virus can be reduced by up to 96.5% if an infected person and an uninfected person wear tight-fitting surgical masks or a surgical cloth-mask combination.
CDC director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky announced the results at Wednesday’s coronavirus briefing at the White House, and associated them with a call for Americans to wear a “tight-fitting mask” featuring two layers or more. President Biden challenged Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his presidency.
“With hospitalizations and deaths still very high, now is not the time to go back on mask requirements,” she said, adding, “The result is this: masks work. and they work when properly fitted and worn correctly. “
Deaths linked to the virus, which resurfaced strongly in the United States in November and still remain high, appear to be steadily declining; new cases of the virus and hospitalizations started to decline last month. But researchers warn that a more contagious variant of the virus first discovered in Britain is doubling about every 10 days in the United States. The CDC warned last month that it could become the dominant variant in the country by March.
As of February 1, 14 states and the District of Columbia had implemented universal masking mandates; masking is now mandatory on federal property and on national and international transport. But while masks are known to both reduce respiratory droplets and aerosols exhaled by infected wearers and to protect the uninfected wearer, their effectiveness varies widely due to air leakage around the edges of the mask.
“Any mask is better than nothing,” said Dr. John Brooks, lead author of the new CDC study. “There is substantial and compelling data that mask wear is reducing the spread, and in communities that adopt mask wear, new infections are decreasing.”
But, he added, the new research shows how to improve protection. The agency’s new lab experiments are based on ideas put forward by Linsey Marr, an aerosol transmission expert at Virginia Tech, and Dr Monica Gandhi, who studies infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco.
One option to reduce transmission is to wear a fabric mask over a surgical mask, the agency said. The alternative is to adjust the surgical mask more tightly to the face by “tying and tucking” – that is, by tying the two strands of the earrings together where they attach to the edge of the mask, then by folding and flattening the extra fabric at the edge of the mask and tucking it in for a tighter seal.
Dr Brooks warned that the new study was based on lab experiments, and it’s unclear how these masking recommendations will work in the real world (the experiments used three-layer surgical and fabric masks). “But it is very clear that the more we who wear masks and the better the mask adapts, the more each of us individually benefits.
Other effective options that improve fit include using a mask-adjuster – a contoured frame across the face – over a mask, or wearing a sheer nylon hosiery sleeve around the neck and pulled over. a surgical tissue or mask, the CDC said. .
Even though vaccines are slowly being rolled out across the country, the emergence of new variants, which may respond differently to treatments or dodge the immune system to some extent, has prompted public health officials to stress that Americans should continue. to take protective measures such as masking.
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