As the highly transmissible Omicron is spreading across US like a “wild fire” health experts are advising to upgrade our masks – especially if we are wearing cloth variety.

Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN Medical Analyst and an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, told CNN “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations. There’s no place for them in light of Omicron. This is what scientists and public health officials have been saying for months, many months, in fact.” Dr Wen further added:

• “We need to be wearing at least a three-ply surgical mask. You can wear a cloth mask on top of that, but do not just wear a cloth mask alone.
• “Ideally, in crowded places, ‘you should be wearing a KN95 or N95 mask‘, which can be as inexpensive as a few dollars each.
• “If we’re going to go as far as to say that masks are required — when we don’t come from a mask-wearing culture and people don’t like wearing masks — at least recommend that they wear the most effective mask.
• “Other countries, including Germany and Austria, have ‘switched their standard to say that a face covering in public must be at least a medical-grade surgical mask’ in certain settings.

“It’s taken longer for people to appreciate the nature of airborne infection — that this isn’t necessarily a hybrid infection, say with influenza, where it can both be spread by droplets, inhaled a little bit, on surfaces and infect that way. It appears … the primary driver of (coronavirus) infection is shared air.”

– Dr. Erin Bromage, an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (source: CNN)

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Chas Danner explains in New York Magazine Intelligencer “Surgical masks, when medical-grade quality and worn tightly across the face, are better than cloth masks. But high filtration respirators like N95s or KN95s — which are quite comfortable, provide gold-standard protection against airborne particles, and have been widely available from reputable sellers in the U.S. for a long time — are what everyone should now be using and what every institution should be making available.”

The key reason is that transmission of the coronavirus is primarily through aerosols, which float around in the air — you inhale them — and are not filtered well by cloth masks. You really need melt-blown polypropylene, which you find in surgical masks and N95s, to stop these small particles.

– Abraar Karan, Stanford infectious-diseases doctor (source: Intelligencer)

More detail on ongoing campaign on better masks can be found here.

According to the Washington Post, US Congress is reportedly beginning to provide KN95 masks to House staff amid concerns of breakthrough infections.