Masks cut the risk of Kovid in half, new study shows

According to a review of eight studies published in the British Medical Journal, wearing a face mask cuts the risk of getting Kovid in half. Similarly washing hands. Meanwhile, physical distancing reduces the risk by a quarter.

The findings come amid evidence that vaccination efforts were not enough to prevent a resurgence as temperatures plummeted and crowds were indoors, forcing countries including Austria and the Netherlands to impose restrictions.

“It is likely that further control of the COVID-19 pandemic will depend not only on high vaccination coverage and its effectiveness, but also on continued adherence to effective and sustainable public-health measures,” said study lead researcher Stella Talik. The author and an epidemiologist at Monash University in Melbourne, said in the paper.

Scientists struggled to evaluate public-health measures, saying they could not assess other efforts such as quarantines, lockdowns and school closures because studies were too different. He called for more research, saying his findings were limited due to a lack of reliable and comparable data.

An accompanying editorial in the BMJ states that funding on public-health measures accounts for just 4% of global COVID research.

“Considering the central importance of public health and social measures to epidemic control, the uncertainties and controversies surrounding their effects, and the immense research efforts being undertaken in vaccine and drug development, The lack of investment is puzzling,” Paul Glaszio, director of the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare at Bond University in Australia, wrote in an editorial with scientists from the UK and Norway.

Glasziou and his colleagues also sought to explain the researchers’ finding of hand-washing – a surprising finding considering coronavirus transmission mostly in Hawaii. The results may reflect how people who frequently wash their hands take other steps.

“It is likely that hand washing is a marker for many protective behaviors such as avoiding crowds, distancing and wearing masks,” he said.