Plastic Shields Don’t Stop Aerosol Transmission of Coronavirus

Plastic Shields Don’t Stop Aerosol Transmission of Coronavirus

Plastic Shields

• New researchTrusted Source finds that while wearing a surgical face mask can provide protection against airborne infection, face shields offer little or no protection.
• EvidenceTrusted Source suggests that SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is transmitted when people expel virus-containing droplets when they sneeze or cough.
• StudiesTrusted Source has found that breathing and talking can expel droplets containing the virus. These particles remain airborne and may spread widely through a room.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, people have used plastic visors and face shields for protection against potential infection in shops and other places where crowds gather.

However, a new researchTrusted Source presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases finds that while wearing a surgical face mask can provide similar protection against airborne infection as wearing a respirator, face shields offer little or no protection.

The study, conducted by researchers at Philipps University Marburg in Marburg, Germany, compared 32 types of masks intended for use in hospitals, including cloth and surgical masks, respirators, and face shields.

Researchers found that surgical face masks had the lowest drop in pressure, providing the least resistance to breathing. Respirator-type masks had the highest pressure drop.

The cloth masks and the noncertified surgical masks performed the worst, only filtering out between 11.3 and 14.2 percent of particles. Surprisingly, a type II surgical face mask had similar “as worn” filtration results at 47 percent as KN95 respirators at 41 percent. The FFP2 respirators showed the best filtration, blocking 65 percent of particles.

Face shields were found to have no significant effect at all. the public should wear certified surgical face masks of good quality rather than cloth masks or face shields, which performed poorly in our study.