Wearing masks best way to reduce covid spread

Wearing masks in NYC. Source: New York Times

From The Guardian:

Requiring the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus in areas at the epicenter of the global pandemic may have prevented tens of thousands of infections, a new study suggests.

Mask-wearing is even more important for preventing the virus’ spread than social distancing and stay-at-home orders, researchers said in the study published in PNAS: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

Infection trends shifted dramatically when mask-wearing rules were implemented on April 6 in northern Italy and April 17 in New York City - at the time among the hardest hit areas of the world by the health crisis - the study found.

“This protective measure alone significantly reduced the number of infections, that is, by over 78,000 in Italy from April 6 to May 9 and over 66,000 in New York City from April 17 to May 9,” researchers calculated.

When mask wearing went into effect in New York, the daily new infection rate fell by about 3% per day, researchers said. In the rest of the country, daily new infections continued to increase.