Extract
A debate is taking place on the use of face masks (both cloth and surgical) as a prevention tool in the community vis à vis the recent World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. To shed light on this important topic, we reviewed relevant literature, focusing on the keywords “infection control”, “prevention”, “masks”, “respirators”, “viral infections” and “COVID-19”, without time restrictions to identify a minimum set of references from an electronic database (PUBMED), existing guidelines, viral diseases, airborne diseases and grey literature.
Abstract
Cloth masks are a simple, economic and sustainable alternative to surgical masks as a means of source control of SARS-CoV-2 in the general community https://bit.ly/2x2xTL4
Acknowledgements
The article is part of the activities of WAidid (World Association for Infectious Diseases and Immunological Disorders), the Global Tuberculosis Network (GTN) and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, Tradate (ITA-80, 2017-2020-GBM/RC/LDA).
Footnotes
Author contributions: S. Esposito and N. Principi co-wrote the manuscript. G.B. Migliori and C.C. Leung wrote sections of the manuscript, edited the text for major intellectual components and designed the table. All authors approved the text.
Conflict of interest: S. Esposito has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: N. Principi has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: C.C. Leung has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: G.B. Migliori has nothing to disclose.
- Received April 18, 2020.
- Accepted April 21, 2020.
- Copyright ©ERS 2020
This version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence 4.0.