Manila - The use of two masks and making sure the mask fits snugly is like to significant make a person's exposure covid-19, US health experts said on February 10.
The U.S. Center of Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) carried out a study with the use of two-layered cloth mask over a three-ply surgical mask, and knotting the ear loops of surgical mask and then tucking the excess materials close to the face, protects against the coronavirus.
It was found out and concluded that both of these methods helped lessen to possible contaminated aerosols by greater than 90% in laboratory simulations.
The data showed that proper wearing of mask help reduce to exposure to aerosol particles that is as tiny as droplets that spread coronavirus, when compared to not wearing mask at all.
The experiment done emphasizes that "wearing masks works, and they work best when they have good fit and worn properly, " CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told news reporters.
Walensky also added that reusable devices such as mask-fitters were also a good option to improve mask's fit
The result of the experiment shows the un-knotted surgical mask alone blocked 42% of particles from simulated cough while the cloth mask alone blocked 44.3 %.
The double mask combination alone blocked 92.5 % of cough particles.
In another method of experiment, the CDC simulated the spread of coronavirus during breathing when one or both individuals are properly masked. In the first scenario with only the source aerosols wearing a mask, they found out exposure to covid-19 was reduced to 82.2% when double masking, and 62.9 % with sug fitting, knotted and tucked surgical mask.
The double mask, knotted and tucked surgical mask showed 96.4% and 95.9% exposure to aerosols respectively.
Now that there is a more contagious coronavirus variants circulating, CDC medical officer John Brooks said to the Washington Post , " What ever we can do to improve the fit of the mask to make it work better, the faster we can to end this pandemic
Source: Reuters
