Harvard’s Joseph Allen says “everyone” should wear an N95 mask

Harvard’s Joseph Allen says “everyone” should wear an N95 mask

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The call for the federal government to ensure that high filtration masks are available to all essential workers and the general public is growing.

Joseph Allen, an associate professor and director of the Harvard TH School of Public Health Healthy Buildings program, wrote a op-ed for The Washington Post on Tuesday, explaining why “everyone” should be wearing an N95 mask at this point in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Allen is not the only local public health expert who is pushing for “better masks” as the pandemic continues. His colleagues at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Abraar Karan and Dr. Ranu Dhillon, are pushing for a national initiative this would distribute high filtration masks, such as N95s, to all families in the United States.

“I’m not alone in asking for better masks, and certainly not the first,” wrote Allen. “But I am joining the chorus that calls them. This may be the key to slowing down the pandemic and limiting the spread of new, more communicable variants until we are all vaccinated. “

While a typical fabric mask should capture about half of the respiratory aerosols released when a person speaks or just breathes, high filtration masks like N95s filter 95 percent, Allen wrote. Two people using N95s result in a 99% reduction in potential exposure.

“In the struggle for information and tools in the early days of the pandemic, it was acceptable to just say that any fabric mask would do because it is true,” wrote Allen. “Any facial coverage is better than none. But we’ve learned a lot since then and we need to adjust our strategy. “

The professor said that there is no reason, at this point in the pandemic, that any essential worker – or anyone else – should be without better masks.

Before the pandemic, the N95s cost about 50 cents and were easy to manufacture, according to Allen.

“We could reduce the exposure by 99% to what should be $ 1 per mask,” he wrote. “(Prices are higher now because of the failure to produce an adequate supply.) Provide better ventilation and some distance between people and you will have hospital-level protection.”

According to Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious physician and medical director of the Boston Medical Center’s Special Pathogens Unit, the United States not only needs a national effort to make high-fidelity masks available to the public, but the government should start with launching a standard for the masks that are available.

“It is unfair that we have the greatest use of PPE by the American public in history and the quality of these masks is not being moderated, standardized or regulated,” she wrote on Twitter. “It’s not just about N95s. These may not work in all situations, but there are other qualities for good masks besides filtering efficiency, including fit and sealing, the ability to resist moisture (from sweat and saliva) etc. These qualities can be improved in consumer masks. “

What is needed is the equivalent of Operating bending speed, the government initiative initiated under the Trump administration aimed at accelerating the development, production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, for “cheap high-quality PPE and improved ventilation in public places,” she said.

“Don’t get me wrong – a mask is better than none,” she wrote. “Wear a mask. Using [the] the excuse for not wearing high quality masks for not wearing a mask is like refusing a rescue raft because you didn’t get a boat at the time. “

During a Wednesday night at CNN City Hall, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of President Joe Biden’s top medical consultants at COVID-19, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new chief the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the former head of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, were asked about finding better masks. Both doctors said the general public did not need to wear N95 masks.

Boston doctors, Karan and Dhillon, who advocate a high-fidelity mask program, have expressed frustration on social media with Fauci and Walensky’s response.

“We need to do everything we can [to] stop transmission to save lives now, prevent the emergence and spread of more deadly variants from spreading faster and it’s time to increase vaccination, ”wrote Dhillon in a Twitter topic refuting the argument of top officials.

Karan reiterated in his own topic that the argument for providing better masks is not as simple as “mass-produced N95s”.

“You still need to make sure that the fit is correct and that people are using them consistently during situations of high risk of transmission, both outside and inside the home,” he wrote.

Until there is federal leadership to expand access to high filtration masks and better guidance for their use, Allen wrote in his op-ed this is if you cannot find a better “double mask” mask using a surgical mask and a cloth mask.

“The surgical mask offers good, certified filtration, while the fabric mask at the top helps improve fit,” he wrote. “Research shows that this can reach more than 90 percent filtration.”

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