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There is no doubt that masks protect, protect lives and prevent unnecessary suffering. Others and I have said this since February, says professor and infection control expert Jörn Klein from the University of Southeastern Norway to Dagbladet.
On Christmas Eve, word came out that a mask reduces the spread of droplets from a coughing or speaking person by up to 99.9 percent.
It shows a laboratory experiment in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, where people and dolls were used, NTB reported.
The researchers showed that a woman standing six feet from a man who coughs without a mask is exposed to 10,000 times more exhalation drops than if she had been wearing a mask.
99.9 percent
“There is no longer any doubt that masks can reduce the spread of potentially infectious droplets,” Ignazio Maria Viola, lead author of the study, published in The Royal Society, told AFP.
Large exhalation droplets are believed to be the most important transmission method for COVID-19, the researchers note.
– If you wear a mask, you reduce the transmission of the virus to one tenth. For the big drops we analyzed, we’re talking about a 99.9 percent reduction, says Viola.
When we breathe, we send out drops of different sizes.
Can save lives
The Edinburgh experiment looked at drops with a diameter of 170 microns, about four times the thickness of a hair, writes NTB.
Smaller droplets remain suspended in the air for longer. The smallest, the so-called aerosols, are usually carried by air currents.
These are generally less than 20-30 microns and therefore have a fraction of the volume of the drops examined by Viola.
An institute in Seattle has estimated that 55,000 lives could be saved in the United States over the next four months if a general requirement for a mouthpiece is introduced.
Infection control professor Klein says that the effectiveness of sanitary napkins, of course, varies with different circumstances, such as the type of sanitary napkin, how well it fits, the amount of infectious material, and variables such as humidity and temperature.
– Sufficient evidence
However, he believes that there is no longer the slightest doubt that face masks provide effective protection.
– Now I hope that FHI and those responsible for infection control finally have enough evidence to protect lives by generally recommending face masks in all health institutions, says Jörn Klein and adds:
– Infection control works in a multimodal way, which means that we need more layers of protection. Nozzles are one of these layers, says Jörn Klein.
