Photo by: AP Photo / Rogelio V. Solis
A government study released on Wednesday, February 10, 2021, found that wearing two masks can better than one, in protecting against coronavirus infection.
Amid concerns over new strains of COVID-19 spreading across the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released additional guidance and a new report on Wednesday on best practices for wearing masks.
According to the report, experiments conducted by the CDC showed that exposure to potentially infectious aerosols decreased by about 95% when two mannequins wore tight-fitting masks – either knotting and folding a medical procedure mask or placing a cloth mask over a medical mask procedure, also known as “double mask”.
Dr. Thomas Marcellino, Douglas County health officer, said that strategies such as double masking are increasingly on people’s minds.
“I think what happened was that we see these variants and that propagation is easier, so we started to think, ‘How can we deal with this? … We can do better with masks, ”” Marcellino said in a telephone interview with Journal-World on Wednesday.
Journal-World spoke to Marcellino and Dr. Jennifer Schrimsher, an infectious disease physician at LMH Health, individually about the double-masking strategy. The two doctors agreed that while two masks – if used correctly – were likely to increase protection, the most urgent issue was to get the general public to wear a mask correctly.
“If you put two fences or two layers of chicken around, it is more likely to be effective than a layer of chicken around. But if you’re just trying to keep the chickens away, you just need a layer, ”said Schrimsher.
Marcellino said the current Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health recommendation is that the masks should have at least two layers, completely cover the nose and mouth and fit comfortably on the nose and the side of the face. He said that more layers would probably provide better protection against inhaled particles.
“It’s about finding a balance, really, about how you can breathe and function and still have protection against any contaminants or viruses,” he said.
Schrimsher also said that it is important that the masks are easy to breathe. If a mask has many layers and it is difficult to breathe, people are likely to suck in air from the sides of the mask, which will negate the purpose of wearing it, she said.
“A mask with a few layers is likely to be more beneficial to the user than trying to stack a lot of masks and not being able to breathe,” she said. “If we could get people to wear a mask properly, we would be in a much better place.”
Of course, if someone wants to use two masks, this will provide extra protection, as long as the masks fit properly, Marcellino said. People at high risk of contracting the virus can opt for a double mask, as long as they are able to work safely and breathe well.
The two strategies employed in the recent CDC study – double masking and knots and attaching the ear straps of a medical procedure mask – were designed to create a tighter fit that provided more protection. The double-masking strategy that the CDC experiments used involved specifically the use of a disposable mask under a cloth mask. The CDC experiments did not include other combinations of masks, such as cloth on cloth, medical procedure mask on medical procedure mask or medical procedure mask on cloth.
Photo by: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
An infographic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows how the use of a tight-fitting mask can help limit the spread of COVID-19.
But the CDC’s updated mask guidance says that people should not wear two disposable masks or combine a KN95 mask with any other type of mask. Disposable masks for medical procedures are not designed to fit well, says the guidance, so using more than one does not improve the fit.
The CDC did not offer an explanation as to why people should not combine a KN95 mask with another type of mask and did not answer a question from the Journal-World asking why. According to the CDC website, a KN95 mask is a type of facial filtering mask that is usually made in China and is similar to the N95 masks commonly used in the United States.
Marcellino and Schrimsher said that N95 masks filter well on their own and that using a second mask under an N95 mask would worsen the seal of an N95 mask. But Marcellino also said that when he wears an N95 mask, he usually wears another mask over it to protect it from getting dirty.
For instructions on how to knot and fold the ear loops of a medical procedure mask to improve fit, the CDC linked to a YouTube video from UNC Health titled “Professional tip to help your ear mask fit more tightly. ”.
Marcellino said he believed the renewed attention to masks and their effectiveness were sparked by newly detected variants of COVID-19. Schrimsher said the UK variant, which is more transmissible, is likely to be the predominant strain in the United States by the end of March. She also said that there appeared to be a pause in the COVID-19 cases reported at the time.
“It looks like the calm before the storm again,” she said.
If the new variants of COVID-19 send the number of cases in Douglas County in the wrong direction, and if the hospital becomes overloaded, Marcellino said the health department may need to recommend double masking.
“There is currently no evidence that it is widely distributed,” said Marcellino of the UK’s COVID-19 variant. The variant was identified in Kansas on February 3.
“It has the potential to become more prominent and that is what we are trying to avoid. That’s why wearing a mask is important, because we have to assume that it could be here, ”said Marcellino.
More information from CDC on how to make the mask fit better:
The updated mask guide from the CDC includes additional information on how to improve the fit of a mask for better protection.
The CDC lists two important ways to ensure that the mask fits correctly. First, make sure it fits your face perfectly and that there are no cracks around your nose, side or neck that could allow air with respiratory droplets to leak in and out around the edges. Second, choose a multi-layered mask to keep your own respiratory droplets inside and those of others outside.
Here are other tips from the CDC:
• Choose a mask with a nose string.
• Use a mask adjuster or brace.
• If your fabric mask does not have multiple layers, you can add another layer of protection using a disposable mask under the fabric mask.
• Tie a knot and fold the ear straps of a medical mask.