Why we need to wear masks again

Imagine you or a vulnerable loved one - needs urgent medical care.

- IRIS GORFINKEL

If you're lucky enough to have a family doctor, you head to their clinic. Like most, yours is housed in a building with low ceilings and little air filtration. You enter the waiting room where several patients sit shoulder-to-shoulder waiting.

You have no choice but to sit alongside people sneezing, coughing and blowing their noses. Few if any, patients and health care workers are wearing a mask. While grateful for the hand sanitizer on offer, you begin to wonder if that will be enough to prevent your picking up an infection you hadn't anticipated.

It's an all-too-familiar scenario.

The most common reason people see a GP is to assess an upper respiratory infection. They most frequently start after inhaling infected droplets or aerosols or from having touched an infected surface.

An N95 or KN95 mask helps block transmission, whether it's SARS CoV-2, influenza or a common cold virus like RSV. They're not perfect, but they reduce viral transmission by 30 per cent. Yet in spite of their benefits, most health care workers and patients no longer routinely mask, even during assessments requiring close contact with an increased risk of disease spread.