DIY masks ‘could help wipe out Covid-19’
An academic has lent her support to the growing movement calling for mask use for the general public.
If nine in 10 people wear effective DIY face masks in public Covid-19 could be “wiped out”, a researcher has said.
Makeshift masks have become the focus of intense debate, with some saying that masks should be compulsory while others have suggested they could be problematic and cause supply issues with medical masks for frontline workers.
Government advisers are reviewing the evidence which has presented a mixed picture thus far.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that the only people who need masks in the general public are those who are sick, or caring for someone who is sick.
But in a new web briefing for the Royal Society of Medicine, Trish Greenhalgh, professor of primary health care at the University of Oxford, lent support to the use of homemade masks.
“If 80 to 90% of us do it, and if the masks were say 80-90% effective, that would probably – the modellers say – be enough to reduce the effective R0 down to wipe out this disease and we can all get on with our lives,” she said.
