Wearing mask most effective shield against coronavirus

PARIS: A new research has revealed that wearing a mask is the most effective shield against the coronavirus.

The research stated that they expose mask wearers, respondents, to smaller, less harmful doses of the disease which spark an immune response.  

Non-medical fabric or disposable masks have been recommended across the world, mainly as a way to help stop infected people from spreading the new coronavirus.

According to a recent paper published this month in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Non-medical fabric does not offer full protection, masks may potentially reduce the amount of virus inhaled by a wearer.

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“We hypothesise that the higher a dose (or inoculum) of virus you get into your body, the more sick you get,” one of the authors Monica Gandhi, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of California San Francisco.

“We think that masks reduce that dose of virus that you inhale and, thereby, drive up rates of asymptomatic infection.”

The director of the UCSF-Gladstone Center for AIDS Research said that asymptomatic infection was linked to a strong immune response from T-lymphocytes a type of white blood cell-that may act against COVID-19.

“We think masks can act as a sort of ‘bridge’ to a vaccine by giving us some immunity”, she said, adding that researchers were launching several studies to try and test the theory.

These would include looking at whether the requirement of a mask in certain cities had reduced the severity of the disease there.