Omicron! Wearing face mask lowers risk of catching Covid by up to 225 times

While the world seems to be coming out of the Coronavirus crisis, the new variant has raised concerns around the world. The Omicron variant has penetrated more than 40 countries. Last Thursday (December 2), the first Omicron patient was found in the country. At present, the number of Omicron infected in the country has reached 23. Most of these 10 patients are from Maharashtra. This has added to the anxiety. 

People are wondering what to do if they want to avoid the danger of omicron. Masks play an more important role in protecting against the coronavirus than socal distancing. This information has come to light from a recently published research. Wearing a face covering could lower the risk of catching Covid by up to 225 times, a new study has found. Epidemiologists have been talking about the importance of masks since the beginning of covid crisis.

A study by experts in Germany and the United States underscores the importance of masks. If you stand 3 meters away from an infected person for 5 minutes and neither of them is wearing a mask, then you are 90% more likely to get corona infection. However it would take 30 minutes for the risk to be that high if someone was to wear a surgical mask, even if it does not fit “perfectly” on the face.

If both of them are wearing medical grade FFP masks and they are standing at a distance of 3 meters from each other, the risk of corona spreading even after one hour is only 0.4 percent.

According to experts at Göttingen and Cornell University, the role of physical distance is important in preventing the spread of corona. But the role of the mask is more important than that. The use of masks can reduce the transmission rate by 50%. The protection afforded by the mask is twice as much as the physical distance. This underscores the importance of using masks.