Health officials are voicing their doubt on how effective cloth masks are in preventing the omicron variant from transmitting between COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Asha Shajahan, the medical director of Community Health for Beaumont Grosse Pointe in Detroit, United States of America, while speaking with Fox 2 Detroit, expressed that a cloth mask isn’t enough to stop omicron. Instead, heavy-duty masks are needed to keep the variant at bay.
In her words, “You want to make sure it’s at least a three layer surgical mask or an N-95 or higher,” she said. “We want to make sure it’s not a cloth mask. A cloth mask does not offer the protection that you need.”
She further buttresed that, “the purpose for wearing a mask is to offer filtration from the aerosol particles of the virus,”
“If you have a cloth mask you want to make sure it’s at least 2-3 layers, but I would recommend getting a surgical mask that actually has the filters built into the material,” Shajahan advised.
This concern seems to be a running theme among experts, as Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of health Policy and infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennesseealso believes that face masks might not be enough to stop the omicron variant.
According to him, “Omicron produces more virus, even than delta,”
“So, the masks’ capacity to interrupt or reduce transmission back and forth is likewise reduced.”
As of December 2021, Omicron is the newest variant is of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
It was first reported to the World Health Organization from South Africa on 24 November 2021.
