The Doctor Will See You Now [Non-Fiction]

Chapter 106: The COVID Series

Professor Yuen Kwok-Yung, who is the Chair Professor and head of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Hong Kong and a major infectious disease advisor, has published a paper on the efficacy of mask-wearing.

Here, if anyone wants a read: COVID-19 epidemic: disentangling the re-emerging controversy about medical facemasks from an epidemiological perspective by YUEN KY and CHAN KH. https://academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyaa044/5813980 (also in external link)

The gist of it is thus:

1) Infected people wearing face masks can help reduce spread.

Infected people wearing a face mask is likely to be much better than just covering your nose and mouth when coughing and sneezing (especially important as that is how nCoV is spread and infected people without symptoms will still spread diseases).

2) Uninfected people wearing masks can *probably* help reduce spread.

Whether uninfected people wearing face masks can help reduce the risk of infection is difficult to measure. In healthcare workers, it reduces the risk of catching respiratory viruses by 40-60% after accounting for the other variables. In the general population, because people don't always wear masks / don't wear them properly / don't maintain personal hygiene on the side properly, it's very hard to measure. Need more research.

3) Wearing facemasks in high risk areas can help control epidemics.

Hong Kong has 8 million residents with one of the densest populations and one of the highest risks of imported nCoV cases from China. It also has the highest rates of public face mask use and also has the shortest winter surge seen in the past 5 years (probably not wholly attributable to the mask-wearing).

And now, funnily enough, WHO reverses its stance on mask-wearing after weeks of telling people they don't need to wear masks unless folks have symptoms or are taking care of at-risk people. Now, they are saying:

"There may be situations where the wearing of masks may reduce the rate at which infected individuals may infect others. We will support governments who wish to have a measured approach to the use of masks and who include that as part of the comprehensive strategy to control this disease."

I've told you why Hong Kongers have such awareness and self-control during this outbreak: it's their experience from SARS. Part of that experience is the inherent mistrust in anything China and WHO says. And it's paying off.