Wearing Face Masks and Social Distancing Actually Work to Contain COVID-19, According to a New Study

The best practices for controlling an infectious disease like COVID-19 aren’t easy to follow—keeping six feet apart from others, wearing face masks in public, and, if you’re a health care worker, wearing shields to protect your eyes as well. But in a study published Monday in The Lancet, researchers provide the strongest evidence yet that these practices do indeed lower the risk of spreading the virus. An international group of scientists, led by senior author Dr. Holger Schunemann, professor of clinical epidemiology and medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, analyzed 172 studies conducted in 16 countries that looked at the connection between social distancing, wearing masks, and wearing eye protection, and the risk of transmitting the virus. The studies included people with COVID-19 infections in addition to those with two other diseases caused by coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. The studies were observational, meaning that they tracked infection rates among people who practiced any of the aforementioned behaviors. Of the 172 studies, 44 (involving more than 25,000 participants) also included comparisons between those who followed the behaviors and those who did not. When it comes to social distancing, the analysis showed that, on average, the risk of getting infected when remaining 1 meter (a little more than 3 ft) from an infected person was about 3%, while staying less than 1 meter apart upped the risk to 13%. The further people stand away fro...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news