CDC recommends people wear cloth masks to block the spread of COVID-19
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidelines today recommending that people in the US wear homemade face coverings to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“This is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it,” President Trump said in a press conference today.
Since cases of COVID-19 were first reported in the US in January, the CDC said that only health care providers and people who are acutely ill should wear face masks. Health care providers use surgical masks and N95 respirators, which filter out tiny particles in the air, to protect themselves when they’re working closely with sick patients.
The White House task force and the CDC has been evaluating their mask recommendations over the past few days.
“The idea of getting a much more broad, community-wide use of masks outside of the health care setting is under very active discussion at the task force. The CDC group is looking at that very carefully,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Tuesday.
The US has a severe shortage of these medical-grade masks, leaving doctors and nurses exposed to infection. In February, the US surgeon general warned that if the general public bought these masks, they put health care workers at risk.
The new guidance stresses that members of the general public should not use surgical and N95 masks, because those should be reserved for health care workers. Instead, they should wear cloth masks or other makeshift face coverings. There is limited evidence that these types of makeshift masks prevent the spread of disease, though some research shows that they do reduce the amount of particles a person wearing them spreads. Some experts say that they’re better than nothing.
Some cities and states, like Colorado and New York City, had already asked people to cover their faces when out in public.
Based on current estimates, the US is on pace to have the worst COVID-19 outbreak of any country in the world.
Developing…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidelines today recommending that people in the US wear homemade face coverings to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. “This is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it,” President Trump said in a press conference today.…
