Facemasks can flatten the COVID-19 disease-progress curve. Combined with lockdown periods they can reduce future disease waves, according to new research.
Modelling shows:
* Effect is greatest when 100% of the population wear facemasks
* Facemasks with 'lockdown' can control the epidemic
* Facemasks, with either social distancing or 'lockdown' can help reopen economic activity
* Home-made facemasks are 90% as effective as surgical issue - vital for poorer countries
A new study, carried out by a University of Greenwich / Cambridge University multidisciplinary team, shows that the best results will be achieved when everyone wears facemasks. The work by leading mathematical modellers, engineers and epidemiologists, shows facemask use by the public could significantly reduce the rate of COVID-19 spread, prevent further disease waves and allow less stringent lock-down regimes.
The article adds that widespread facemask wearing, combined with social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions "may provide an acceptable way of controlling the COVID-19 pandemic and re-opening economic activity".
Professor John Colvin says: "The models show that if COVID-19 is to be controlled or eradicated, early lock-down combined with facemask adoption by close to 100% by the public needs to occur.""Quarantine periods alone do not prevent the occurrence of secondary and tertiary waves of the pandemic occurring, which could be larger than the initial wave. But the combination of this and 100% facemask use can flatten the curve and prevent additional disease waves."
"If PPE is in short supply, home-made masks, with one tissue in between two pieces of kitchen paper, are shown to be 90% as functional as surgical masks. But ideally, supplying the public with medical-standard facemasks needs to become government policy."
"Our results are relevant to the developed as well as the developing world, where large numbers of people are resource poor, but fabrication of home-made, effective facemasks is possible."The team's models considered uncertainties, as well as the negative case for the public adoption of facemasks.
Professor Colvin adds: "In terms of cultural issues around wearing masks, for instance, a mask could be associated with crime, so the message needs to be: "my mask protects you, your mask protects me". If positive efforts are made to change perceptions around facemasks, they may come to be regarded as fashion items, which will also help overcome this issue."
Two models were used: a branching process looking at how frequently facemasks would need to be used by the general population to "flatten the curve". And a mechanistic model, based on published information on the mechanisms of COVID-19 transmission. This looked at how effective facemasks are at reducing the 'free-living' COVID-19 inoculum and transmission rates.Professor Colvin adds: "Both models show that under a wide range of conditions, facemask use by the general public can 'flatten the curve' significantly, even when facemasks are only 50% effective at capturing exhaled virus inoculum, with an equal or lower efficiency on inhalation."
"For completeness, we considered the case when facemask use and compliance are very bad and found, counterintuitively, that until about 80% facemask adoption, there is still a small net benefit to the population as a whole."
"The effect is greatest when 100% of the population use facemasks, so this simple technology needs to be re-evaluated for the UK and elsewhere in the world, where facemask use is not being encouraged. Facemasks provide an important tool for the UK's exit strategy from lockdown and stopping the occurrence of further COVID-19 disease waves.""Our research recommends that the UK follows other countries/locations (e.g. Jena, Germany), where facemask use by the general public is now obligatory. Speed is of the essence to save lives in the UK's current wave of COVID-19."
You can read the full paper here
