Wearing a face mask decreases your risk of being infected with coronavirus risk by 65%, scientists find
Wearing a face mask dramatically reduces your risk of falling ill with the novel coronavirus, scientists have found.
A team from the University of California Davis Children's Hospital has found that covering the nose and mouth decreased the risk of COVID-19 infection by 65 percent.
Previously, researchers believed that mask-wearing was only beneficial to prevent transmission of the virus to others.
But, as more studies have found, the piece of cloth doesn't just stop a sick person from spreading the virus, but also protects healthy people from falling ill.
'Everyone should wear a mask,' Dr Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children's Hospital, said during a July 2 livestream.
'People who say, 'I don't believe masks work,' are ignoring scientific evidence. It's not a belief system. It's like saying, 'I don't believe in gravity.'
There are two main methods by which the coronavirus spreads with the first being via droplets that are expelled into the air when a person coughs or sneezes.
Researchers say these droplets are about one-third the size of a human hair, but visible to the naked eye.
The second way is from aerosol particles that humans spray into air when we speak, which are one-onehundreth the size of a human hair and nearly impossible to see.
This method is more dangerous in terms of transmission, but can be lessened by avoiding crowded indoor spaces.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8503445/Wearing-face-mask-decreases-risk-infected-coronavirus-risk-65.html