TY - JOUR T1 - Universal use of face masks for success against COVID-19: evidence and implications for prevention policies JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J DO - 10.1183/13993003.01260-2020 VL - 55 IS - 6 SP - 2001260 AU - Susanna Esposito AU - Nicola Principi AU - Chi Chi Leung AU - Giovanni Battista Migliori Y1 - 2020/06/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/55/6/2001260.abstract N2 - 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.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/2x2xTL4The 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). ER -