San Juan Basin Public Health (SJBPH) issued a Face-Covering Advisory for La Plata and Archuleta counties, effective Saturday, April 11, as an important step to slow the spread of the disease caused by the novel (new) coronavirus (COVID-19).
SJBPH and its partners have taken strong measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, but despite these efforts, there continues to be community transmission within Archuleta and La Plata counties. Without a vaccine or treatment, additional social distancing measures are necessary.
Recent information has indicated that covering your nose and mouth can slow the spread of COVID-19 because:
- Individuals can be contagious before the onset of symptoms. You may be contagious and do not know it. If you have covered your nose and mouth, it can limit the spread of COVID-19.
- We touch our face less when our face is covered. Touching your face after touching something contaminated with COVID-19 increases your chances of getting sick with the virus.
The face covering advisory is particularly important for essential workers such as grocery and restaurant employees when they are regularly interacting with the public. The advisory also applies to anyone who leaves their home to meet essential needs.
Information on how to make face coverings and properly care for them can be found at the CDC website. For the most up to date information on how to take precautions against the spread of COVID-19, visit SJBPH’s website.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The CDC website mentioned above provides three examples of useful, homemade face masks. The following video, from Good Housekeeping, demonstrates similar techniques.
If you do a thorough Google search on the benefits of wearing a face mask, you will find a curious distinction between the official advice disseminated in early March, and the advice now being dispensed in early April.
On February 29, the New York Times quoted the US Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, telling people to stop purchasing commercially produced masks. From that article:
“Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Air can also get in around the edges of the masks, particularly flat surgical masks. Health care workers who wear N95 masks as part of their jobs are required to undergo a fit test at least once a year to ensure that there are no gaps around their mouths.
Most people are unlikely to know how to wear these masks and could accidentally contaminate themselves if they touch the outside of the mask when they remove it and then touch their face.
On April 3, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued contrasting advice, aimed not at protecting the mask-wearer per se, but rather, aimed at reducing the virus spread by people who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic:
CDC continues to study the spread and effects of the novel coronavirus across the United States. We now know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack symptoms (‘asymptomatic’) and that even those who eventually develop symptoms (‘pre-symptomatic’) can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms. This means that the virus can spread between people interacting in close proximity — for example, speaking, coughing, or sneezing — even if those people are not exhibiting symptoms. In light of this new evidence, CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.
As with so many actions we’re taking in April 2020, the decision to wear a mask appears to be a roll of the dice.
Claire Ninde is Communications Director for San Juan Basin Public Health. Learn more at https://sjbpublichealth.org/