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Masks have become commonplace for most Americans venturing out in public as the coronavirus pandemic has dragged on for several months.

Face coverings have proven to be a key preventative measure for slowing the transmission of COVID-19 as the world waits for a safe and effective vaccine.

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But a new paper argues there may be an additional benefit.

Monica Gandhi and George Rutherford from the University of California, San Francisco theorize in commentary published in The New England Journal of Medicine that mask-wearing could also significantly reduce the severity of the disease in those who become infected and ensure a greater number of infections are asymptomatic.

Studies show masks do not filter all airborne droplets, and its still possible for the virus to sneak through and infect the wearer.

But the ideabehind the theory is that masks can block a significant number of coronavirus droplets, lowering the dose of the virus a person inhales and reducing the chances the person will experience serious illness.

An immune response could also potentially be triggered in the mask-wearer with a small amount of virus.

SARS-CoV-2 has the protean ability to cause myriad clinical manifestations, ranging from a complete lack of symptoms to pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and death. Recent virologic, epidemiologic, and ecologic data have led to the hypothesis that facial masking may also reduce the severity of disease among people who do become infected, the paper said.

If this hypothesis is borne out, universal masking could become a form of variolation that would generate immunity and thereby slow the spread of the virus in the United States and elsewhere, as we await a vaccine, researchers wrote.

Researchers cited several examples of masks leading to less severe outcomes in infections.

A study involving hamsters showed those living in mask-shrouded cages were less likely to be infected and showed fewer symptoms compared with unmasked hamsters, researchers said.

An outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks resulted in 81 percent of infected passengers never developing symptoms. Thats compared to the coronavirus outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship outside of China where only 18 percent of the passengers infected were asymptomatic.

During two outbreaks at U.S. food-processing plants where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, 95 percent of those who tested positive were asymptomatic while 5 percent experienced mild symptoms, the researchers noted.

Researchers noted further studies comparing the rate of asymptomatic infection in areas with and without universal mask-wearing are needed.

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Wearing a mask could reduce COVID-19 severity, researchers say | TheHill - The Hill

This entry was posted on September 13, 2020 at 2:57 am and is filed under Preventative Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |