Washington — As new, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus spread, experts say it is time to consider using a medical-grade respirator or wearing a surgical mask and a cloth mask together.
Scientists have agreed for some time the main way the virus is spread is through the air, rather than surfaces, and there's growing evidence that small droplets from ordinary breathing and speech that can travel many meters are a common mode of transmission.
Added to this is the greater contagiousness of emerging variants, like B.1.1.7, which takes a smaller viral load to cause symptomatic COVID-19 compared to the more common strain.
Back when authorities first recommended people wear face coverings, proper masks were in extremely short supply and the public was encouraged to fashion makeshift solutions out of T-shirts or bandanas. But these are far from ideal.
Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, who studies airborne disease transmission, told AFP: "How well a mask works depends on two things: filtration and fit.
"Good filtration removes as many particles as possible, and a good fit means that there are no leaks around the sides of your mask, where air—and viruses—can leak through," she said, adding even a small gap could lead to a 50 percent reduction in performance.
The best materials for blocking small particles include non-woven polypropylene, which is used to make N95s and many surgical-type masks, and the HEPA filters in planes. Among fabrics, tightly woven cotton works best, she added.
In other developments:
• Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque on Tuesday said he did not violate any health standards when he visited Iloilo and Boracay last week, after being in contact with a staff who tested positive with COVID-19.
Roque made the remarks after his photo in Boracay went viral, saying he had no exposure to COVID-19 when he went to Boracay for leisure over the weekend.
* The Philippines’ tally of COVID-19 cases rose to 540,227 on Tuesday after the Department of Health (DOH) reported 1,235 new infections as eight laboratories failed to submit data on time.
According to the DOH, 53 more patients have recovered from the illness, bringing the total to 499,764, which is 92.5 percent of the total. A total of 65 new fatalities brought the death toll to 11,296, which is 2.09 percent of the total.
* The COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) was asked Tuesday to establish a unified national contact tracing protocol to ensure a more effective health emergency data monitoring system in the country.
In House Resolution 1536, Speaker Lord Allan Velasco underscored the need to strengthen the government’s contact tracing efforts using the most effective and safest system to further boost its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Contact Tracing is a public health strategy to dramatically decrease the impact of an epidemic or pandemic that has been used for years to combat communicable diseases such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003,” Velasco said.
* The Philippines should be able to reach herd immunity against COVID-19 by 2023 or possibly sooner, the DOH said on Monday.
Herd immunity refers to when enough members of a population are immune to a disease, preventing it from being spread further. The Philippines aims to inoculate around 70 million against the coronavirus to achieve this.
“We think we can achieve this goal that we want for our population earlier. It won’t take 3 years,” Health Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire said during a virtual briefing, when asked about reports that the Philippines is taking longer than other countries to roll out its COVID-19 vaccines.
* The new policy that exempts government workers from health protocols against COVID-19 was intended to avoid delays in government transactions, Vergeire said Tuesday.
“This is really for ease of government transactions, because having to be quarantined while you need to attend a meeting or need to do work within that area would be something that could delay the transactions of government,” she told CNN Philippines.
A resolution by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases stated that government workers are exempted from COVID-19 testing and quarantine protocols provided they present their IDs and undergo symptom checks.
* The Philippines has enough supplies to run COVID-19 samples through genome sequencing for a month, the DOH said Monday.
“Yun pong mga reagents natin ay ating na-receive last week (We received our reagents last week). Hopefully, we can be able to sustain this for about a month. And we already have placed our orders for succeeding months,” Vergeire said during a virtual briefing.
Genome sequencing is a process that allows scientists to check if a COVID-positive person is infected with a particular COVID-19 variant.