{"id":123278,"date":"2021-01-30T11:29:30","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T15:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/?p=123278"},"modified":"2021-01-30T11:29:30","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T15:29:30","slug":"experts-recommend-wearing-two-masks-for-covid-19-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/experts-recommend-wearing-two-masks-for-covid-19-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts recommend wearing two masks for COVID-19 protection"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Layering your face is in — but not as a fashion statement. It may just save a life.<\/p>

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Public health officials are suggesting double masking as a way to increase the level of protection from the coronavirus and its multiple, more contagious variants.<\/div>\n
“If you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective, and that’s the reason why you see people either double masking or doing a version of an N95,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, now chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.<\/div>\n
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\"Then<\/p>\n
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Then President-elect Joe Biden wore a double masks just before Christmas last year.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been doubling up for weeks — in fact Biden was often seen with a surgical mask under his go-to black fabric covering before being sworn into office.<\/div>\n
On Inauguration Day, transportation secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, took a selfie double masking, and inaugural poet Amanda Gorman wore a surgical mask beneath her Prada version.<\/div>\n
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National youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman arrived at the inauguration wearing a double mask.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Republican US Sens. Mitch Romney and Marco Rubio were seen sporting double masks on Capitol Hill in mid-December.<\/div>\n
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Layer on the protection<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
A single-layer mask isn’t really effective in blocking aerosols,\u00a0studies show,<\/a>\u00a0and even homemade two- and three-ply fabric masks are only partially protective — somewhere in the 50% to 60% range of effectiveness.<\/div>\n
Surgical masks, also called medical-grade masks, are made of three layers of nonwoven fabric typically made from plastic. The colored top layer of fabric is made of medical-grade spunbond polypropylene, which is a resin polymer heat-bonded into a weblike structure.<\/div>\n
A\u00a02020 study<\/a>\u00a0found surgical masks were about 50% effective at protecting the wearer from other people’s aerosols and between 60% and 70% effective at protecting others.<\/div>\n
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But put a surgical mask under a cloth mask and you get “over 91% removal efficiency for particles,” said Joseph Allen, an associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the director of the school’s Healthy Buildings program,\u00a0in a recent interview.<\/a><\/div>\n
In mid-December, Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who is a leading expert in aerosol transmission of viruses, and Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UCSF\/San Francisco General Hospital,\u00a0published a commentary calling for double masking,<\/a><\/div>\n
“For maximal protection,” Marr and Gandhi suggested the public could “wear a cloth mask tightly on top of a surgical mask where the surgical mask acts as a filter and the cloth mask provides an additional layer of filtration while improving the fit.”<\/div>\n
A second option, they said, could be to wear a three-layer mask made from a flexible, tightly woven fabric that conforms to the face, with an insert of a “non-woven high-efficiency filter material,” such as a vacuum bag.<\/div>\n
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Of course, the best facial coverings for protection are the\u00a0N95-type respirators<\/a>, made from fibers woven with an electrical charge that can trap errant particles, much like a sock that sticks to a blanket in the dryer. Similar products include the Chinese KN95, the European FFP1 and FFP2 versions, the Australia-New Zealand P2, the Korean 1st Class and the Japanese DS2.<\/div>\n
“Consider upgrading from a cloth mask to a surgical mask, or from a surgical mask to an N95\/KN95\/equivalent if available. Better masks may help reduce risk from more-contagious strains,” former US Centers for Disease and Control director Dr. Tom Friedan\u00a0tweeted Monday.<\/a><\/div>\n
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