Wearing Masks For Covid-19 Led To Reduction In Asthma Cases By 65%

It is advisable to wear a three-layered cloth mask or consider double-masking for better protection against Covid-19. Wearing face masks can benefit you in many ways.

Make sure you always wear a face mask while stepping out of the house during the pandemic. No just wearing masks can reduce spread of the Covid-19 virus, but this can prevent you from flu, seasonal allergies, and serious asthma symptoms. In fact, a new study has revealed that the widespread use of face masks post the Covid-19 outbreak has led to 65 per cent reduction in serious asthma cases that required hospitalisation. Wearing face masks also helped decrease the spread of viruses such as the flu in the past year, said the study authors from Israel's Sheba Medical Centre, reported Times of Israel.

Face coverings could also prevent pollen from flowers, trees and grass coming into contact with the nose and mouth, thus reducing your risk of suffering from seasonal allergies, the study noted, suggesting people to continue wearing mask outdoors in large gatherings. As COVID-19 cases resurge, several countries have mandated the use of face coverings in public spaces.

Three-layered cloth masks as effective as surgical masks

If it is well-fitted, a three-layered cloth mask can be as effective at reducing the transmission of COVID-19 as a surgical mask, said experts from the Universities of Bristol and Surrey in a paper recently published in the Physics of Fluids journal.

After reviewing and modelling filtration processes, the team found that, under ideal conditions and dependent on the fitting, three-layered cloth masks can perform similarly to surgical masks for filtering droplets. Both types of face coverings can reduce exposure to the virus by around 50 to 75 per cent, they said. The experts believe that if an infected person and a healthy individual are both wearing masks, the risk of exposure could be reduced by up to 94 per cent.

Is wearing two masks better than one?

Yes, scientists say double-masking or wearing two masks at one time can nearly double the effectiveness of filtering out SARS-CoV-2-sized particles and increase the protection against Covid-19. For example, layering a cloth mask over a procedure mask or a procedure mask worn over a cloth mask.

But wearing just one snug-fitting procedure mask would be more effective than wearing two loosely fitted masks, wrote authors of a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. According to lead researcher, Emily Sickbert-Bennett, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, the enhanced filtration of double-masking mainly results from eliminating any gaps or poor-fitting areas of a mask, because medical procedure masks usually don't fit our faces perfectly.

With inputs from agencies