CANBERRA, Sept 17 (Bernama) -- An Australian expert warned on Thursday face masks offer little protection against airborne viruses such as A/H1N1 flu.
Professor Raina MacIntyre, who led a world-first study in Beijing, comparing different masks' effectiveness, said health workers involved in any frontline response to pandemic flu should instead be wearing the more expensive N95 respirator.
A N95 respirator looks similar to a surgical mask though it fits tightly to the face, and it has thicker mesh designed to filter 95 percent of particles from the air, reported China's Xinhua news agency, citing MacIntyre as saying.
"For healthcare workers, really they should be using N95 respirators because surgical masks do not offer significant protection," MacIntyre said.
"What we found was that the N95 masks were protective against .. . clinical respiratory illness and laboratory-proven viral infections, but the surgical masks were not."
Monitoring of 2,000 doctors and nurses after four weeks showed the illness rate for those wearing surgical masks was 7 percent compared to 4 percent for those wearing N95 masks.
The research is expected to meet some resistance from health authorities, and possibly health workers, as the N95 respiratory masks can cost 5 to 10 times the price of surgical masks.
Each worker must also be fitted with an N95 mask, a process that must be repeated annually, while some have complained the masks are too restrictive to work in.
Tiada ulasan:
Catat Ulasan