Why more people are starting to wear two masks



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In a commentary published in mid-December in the journal Cell on the science of mask wearing, two experts wrote that one way for the public to achieve “maximum protection” from masks was to “wear a face mask. fabric well above a surgical mask where the surgical mask acts as a filter and the fabric mask provides an additional layer of filtration while improving the fit. “

When you combine multiple layers, “The air has to follow this tortuous path,” Linsey Marr, a virus transmission expert at Virginia Tech who was one of the authors of the Cell comment, told the New York Times. “The big things [like virus particles] he will not be able to follow these twists and turns.

(Another alternative suggested by the authors: a cloth mask with a pouch that can be filled with filter material, such as that found in vacuum bags.)

“I recommend that people select masks based on the activity and the level of risk of that activity. If you are taking a walk outside with a friend, a simple 2 or 3 layer mask will do, ”said Joseph Allen, professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

“If you go to the grocery store or are an essential worker coming into contact with a lot of people, I recommend wearing a cotton mask over a surgical mask which can pick up over 90% of respiratory aerosols,” Allen said. Friday. in an email. “I also like this approach because most people do not have access to [high-filtration N95 masks], but they have access to a cotton ball and a surgical mask.

On Friday, Dr. Dara Kass, associate professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York who patients treated for coronavirus this spring and had the virus herself, said her support for doubling. “If you are in a high risk area and you are not vaccinated, double masking is the way to go,” she tweeted.

Her tweet included a photo of Pete Buttigieg, President Biden’s candidate for transport secretary, and her husband, Chasten, wearing what appeared to be a double mask during the inauguration. “Always proud to see@PeteButtigieg and @ Chastise best practice model, ”she wrote.

Former US Food and Pharmaceuticals Administrator Scott Gottlieb said in a tweet on Monday: “We also need to become more vigilant on masking. Mask quality doesn’t matter anymore. Better N95, or double masking. “

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website does not mention double masking. The official recommendation is that people wear a mask of two or more layers of tightly woven fabric that you can’t see through, CDC spokesman Brian Katzowitz said. He noted, however, that people who only have single-layer cloth masks could double them up to achieve the “recommended level of protection.”

Dr Paul Sax, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, made a similar note, saying double-masking made sense if a person had only thin cloth masks.

Other experts said the new double-masking some methods might help, but noted that there was no research on the subject yet.

“Double masks are well intentioned, but they haven’t been studied,” said Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist and professor in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

“If you want to wear a double mask, I guess that’s okay,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday. “It makes sense that you have double gates … but make sure you put on the first mask correctly.”

“I think the key is to get so many Americans to wear any mask and wear it correctly, which includes covering your nose,” he said.

Dr Abraar Karan, a doctor of global health and internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who has been a strong advocate for better masks, said that “all of these solutions are important”, but he also warned that the double- masking was not a sure thing.

“While MacGyvering your own mask at home is something that is tempting to do and can provide protection, there really is no guarantee,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday.

He noted that for any mask, a good fit is the key to getting the best filtration, and that the Cell authors cited better fit as one of the reasons for double-masking, with a cloth mask “tightly on. the top “of the typical blue surgical mask.

Karan also said the interest in double masking underscored the lack of high-filtration masks available to the public.

“The reason people are trying to create these solutions is that we don’t have access to the masks that we know are already certified for healthcare workers,” he said.

Karan and his co-authors, in an opinion column published earlier this month in STAT, called for a national initiative to produce and distribute high-filtration masks like the N95s used by health workers.

“Ideally, a set of masks would be sent to every American household each month – the costs to do so are pale compared to the pandemic’s toll in human lives and the economy,” the column said, while calling on President Biden to use defense production. Act to accelerate the production of masks.

Sax said he was also a supporter of making high-quality masks available for free or at reduced prices.

The right masks are essential, say experts. A mask that is very effective in both blocking transmission of the virus from the carrier and protecting it from transmission from others will prevent the virus from spreading.

This “essentially makes the carrier a dead end for the virus,” Karan said in the interview.

Now that the highly transmissible British variant has made its appearance in the United States, effective masks are even more important, he said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki takes off both masks before a briefing.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki takes off both masks before a briefing.NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP via Getty Images

Globe Wire services hardware has been used in this report.


Martin Finucane can be reached at [email protected].



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