Q.
How effective is the antibacterial "polite mask" in preventing infectious air-borne diseases? A.
The best evidence is that wearing a mask can help protect others from disease when they are sick.
Well, wearing a mask around a sick person may reduce your chances of getting infected yourself.
But the mask is far from foolproof.
At the end of 1800, polite masks or surgical masks as our doctor said were introduced into the operating room.
They soon became popular among the public eager to protect themselves from the 1918 flu pandemic.
A century later, the emergence of modern molecular techniques confirmed that surgical masks can indeed provide good protection against influenza.
In a 2013 study, the researchers counted the number of virus particles in the air around flu patients.
They found that surgical masks reduced the outgoing volume of big virus drops. fold.
However, these masks are not very effective for small viral droplets that can stay in the air for longer periods of time and are therefore more contagious, cutting them 2. 8 times.
Surgical masks also provide considerable protection for the worried well. In an oft-
Citing a study of 446 nurses, the researchers found that surgical masks were as good as respirator in protecting the wearer from flu, or almost as good
Technology, masklike equipment used in hospitals.
The work of Australian investigators provides further support for the value of simple surgical masks.
They estimate that wearing a mask in a home setting can reduce the risk of illness for healthy people by 60% to 80%.
Unfortunately, most people do not faithfully wear masks to achieve this level of protection, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are still ambivalent about the use of masks outside the health care environment.
"It is not yet possible to recommend asymptomatic people, including those with high risk of complications, to use masks in the community to prevent exposure to the flu virus, which the agency concluded on its website.
If you don't have a mask, or don't want to wear a mask, standing at least 6 feet of the area around the infected person will increase your chances of staying healthy.
The air around the patient, even if they don't cough or sneeze, is filled with small infectious air particles, and the farther you are from them, the better.
Of course, frequent hand washing is also essential to maintain health, as touching the infected finger to the eye, nose or mouth can spread the infection.
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