In recent weeks, top Trump administration officials offered adamant warnings against widespread use of masks, going so far as to argue that members of the general public were more likely to catch coronavirus if they used them
In recent weeks, facing public uncertainty about coronavirus and a severe domestic shortage of medical-grade face masks, top Trump administration officials offered adamant warnings against widespread use of masks, going so far as to argue that members of the general public were more likely to catch the virus if they used them.
“Guidance needs to change and needs to be clear that these nonmedical, nonsurgical masks are beneficial to the general public and should be worn when outside of the home," said Robert Hecht, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. “At this moment, there are no updates or anticipated changes to the guidance,” said Arleen Purcell, a spokeswoman for the CDC, who reiterated existingthat patients with symptoms should wear masks but that people who are well should not wear the masks to prevent contracting the virus. Unlike the verbal warnings from top health officials, the CDC’s written guidance does not suggest that wearing a mask could increase the risk of catching the virus.
The current federal guidance against wearing masks is at odds with that issued in many other parts of the world, such as the Czech Republic, Beijing and Shanghai, where mask use has been mandated for anyone going out in public. A number of East Asian societies, where mask use is widespread — such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore — have reported lower levels of infection than the U.S. has, despite being closer to the source of the outbreak in Wuhan, China.
As of Monday, federal authorities were not budging. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, said CDC experts were “very loath" to issue recommendations that were not based on robust data.
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