Study: 100% face mask use could crush second, third COVID-19 wave

We've all heard it many times: Wear a face covering — indoors, outdoors, on trains and buses. At work, in the supermarket and at church.

But now a new modeling study out of Cambridge and Greenwich universities suggests that face masks may be even more important than originally thought in preventing future outbreaks of the new coronavirus.

To ward off resurgences, the reproduction number for the virus (the average number of people who will contract it from one infected person) needs to drop below 1.0. Researchers don’t believe that’s achievable with lockdowns alone. However, a combination of lockdowns and widespread mask compliance might do the trick, they say.

“We show that, when face masks are used by the public all the time (not just from when symptoms first appear), the effective reproduction number, Re, can be decreased below 1, leading to the mitigation of epidemic spread,” the scientists wrote in the paper published Wednesday by the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

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