Surgical Masks Help Healthcare Workers Avoid Spread Of Diseases

Pulmonary Medicine Blog By Dr Deepu

The NPR (6/23) “Goats and Soda” blog examines if surgical masks can help prevent the spread of disease. The CDC “recommends health care workers wear a mask with a respirator, called an N95 mask,” that can protect against MERS and other diseases by filtering out 95 percent of infectious particles. This type of mask is successful because they are “individually fitted to the wearer” and don’t work on people with facial hair or have breathing problems, such as asthma patients. While the standard surgical mask has been shown by one study to be “just as good as stopping influenza as N95 masks are,” according to a comparison published in JAMA, no study provides evidence that the “loose fitting” masks can help against MERS