09/03/2021

A New Study Shows How Well Masks Work

It also shows why we need better ones

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, guidance on mask-wearing has varied tremendously across, and within, countries—as have the methods used to encourage mask use and enforce mask mandates. If authorities in places that have shunned masks are claiming that’s due to a lack of substantial evidence of their effectiveness in mitigating the community spread of COVID-19, a first-of-its-kind study now fills that gap in data.

The study is the first designed to assess masking’s impact, not on preventing the virus from entering your airways, as others have, but in reducing overall infection rates among a population cluster. The work, which also explored the most effective ways of promoting mask-wearing, found that symptomatic infections declined by at least 9.3 percent when masks were worn by just a small portion of the community. The researchers performed the study precisely to help inform public health policy, and hope that can now happen just as masks have become critical again.

Researchers randomly selected 600 villages within the same upazilas, Bangladeshi administrative regions. In half, they distributed masks to the population via specific promotional techniques, including free distribution in public places like mosques and marketplaces; communication from trusted leaders like the prime minister and a national cricketing hero; and reinforcement by imams at Friday prayers. The remaining 300 villages, the control group, went about as normal: They weren’t discouraged from using masks, but researchers didn’t intervene. In those groups, only 13 percent of people consistently wore masks; in the targeted groups, 42 percent did.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.