Everything about Surgical Mask totally explained
A
surgical mask is intended to be worn by
health professionals during
surgery and at other times to catch the bacteria shed in liquid droplets and aerosols from the wearer's mouth and nose.
Outside health care facilities, simple, inexpensive masks of similar appearance are commonly worn in heavily populated centres in East Asia to help prevent spreading the common cold. More recently, they were widely used in
China,
Hong Kong,
Vietnam, and
Toronto,
Canada during outbreaks of the
SARS virus.
Modern surgical masks are made from paper or other non-woven material, and are discarded after each use.
Effectiveness
Simple surgical masks can reduce the spread of
bacteria in
aerosols. Apart from protecting the wearer from splashes in the mouth with body fluids, they're intended to protect others from the wearer's oral and nasal bacteria. They are not designed to protect the wearer from inhaled particles.
Viral particles are far too small to be effectively filtered by the fibres of a regular surgical mask. Thus, a mask wearer wouldn't be less likely to catch a viral disease than someone not wearing a mask. However, an already infected person wearing a mask may slightly reduce his chances of infecting others, as it may catch droplets of fluid expelled during
sneeze or
cough.
The
NIOSH N95 standard mask is able to protect the wearer from viral particles in aerosols and airborne liquid droplets. Another benefit of masks, even ones permeable to viruses, is to remind the wearer not to touch his face. Direct skin contact after touching a surface with viruses on it (termed a
fomite) may transfer viruses which are not typically airborne.
A surgical mask will trap some particles but is much less effective than a mask designed for this purpose.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Surgical Mask'.
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