A surgical mask does a good job of trapping large droplets, and some aerosol transmission, he said. "It's meant to keep the surgeon's respiratory issues away from a patient," Ribner explained. A surgical mask, or procedural mask, is meant to protect the environment from the wearer. A similar percentage was noted in the Philippines.īruce Ribner, MD, medical director of the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit at Emory University Hospital, said the two masks serve very different functions.
A new survey, the Premise Coronavirus Awareness Survey, showed that in Taiwan 79.9% of people questioned said they were wearing masks in an effort to protect themselves from COVID-19. In its newly published infection prevention and control recommendations for COVID-19, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the use of N95 respirators in a healthcare setting with the suspected novel coronavirus, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended surgical masks for general patient care and respirators for aerosol-generating procedures only.įace masks have become ubiquitous in China, sold on the street, and worn by almost everyone in public. These infections put into question how effective infection control policies are at preventing transmission. He joins the more than 500 healthcare workers in Wuhan, China, who have also reportedly contracted the disease-just by the middle of January. Yesterday the media reported that a Japanese doctor who was monitoring cruise ship passengers quarantined aboard the Diamond Princess in the port of Yokohama contracted the virus despite wearing gloves and a surgical mask. And the answers hold the key to infection control policies that will become necessary as the disease continues to infect tens of thousands in China and hundreds more across the globe. These are the defining questions surrounding the person-to-person transmission of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 that have yet to be answered-or answered sufficiently-for US experts monitoring the disease. Droplet or aerosol infection spread? Surgical mask or respirator? Asymptomatic transmission or symptomatic only?
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