Ever wonder how effective are those cloth face covers you see people wearing? It turns out that those cloth face covers are just as effective as surgical masks at protecting you against COVID-19. This was a recent finding by researchers at the University of Surrey in the UK.
By now everybody probably has some mask fatigue since this pandemic started in 2020. Almost every country has a mask mandate. There have been different research findings regarding the effectiveness of masks in reducing the spread of COVID-19.
One recent finding showed that cloth face coverings function as well as surgical face masks to capture liquid droplets.
When you breath through a mask, the air get twisted and turned inside the mask. Any inhaled liquid droplets get trapped in the fibers of the masks, preventing you from inhaling them.
Just as Effective
The researchers find that a three-layered cloth mask can perform as well as a surgical mask for filtering these liquid droplets. The result is a 50 to 75 percent reduction of exposure for both cloth masks and surgical masks.
For example, if an infected person and a healthy individual are both wearing masks, the researchers believe this could result in up to 94 percent less exposure.
The study results was published in the April 2021 edition of the journal Physics of Fluids.
Now you don’t have to feel you need to buy some expensive surgical mask to have good protection against inhaled droplets during this pandemi. Just get some relatively inexpensive cloth face covers. The work just as well and provide you the same level of protection.
