Homemade face masks slow spread of COVID-19 according to new study

“What we found was that of the big variables that you can control which influence mortality, one was wearing masks,” says Christopher Leffler of Virginia Commonwealth University, one of the authors of the study.

The study reviewed the death rates of 198 countries in total.

“It wasn’t just by a few per cent, it was up to a hundred times less mortality. The countries that introduced masks from the very beginning of their outbreak have had hardly any deaths.”

Leffler cited that simple homemade face masks were also used during the 1918 flu epidemic, so this solution to fighting the transmission of respiratory viruses should be nothing new to the West. “In North America, where the virus is circulating, mask-wearing is the most important thing that could be done to get this under control.”

South Korea and Japan were among the countries with a lower death toll, along with several other East Asian countries.

“You also have Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau — there are lots of countries that used masks early on. Vietnam and Thailand are good examples — they’ve kept per capita mortality very low,” Leffler says.

In Europe, citizens of the Czech Republic and Slovakia were forced to wear masks early on in the pandemic. This mandatory measure is credited with helping to lower their death tolls.

“If you look at Latin America, Venezuela is an example where the very first day that they confirmed a case, the president demonstrated how to wear a mask on television. You can find around the world examples from many regions.” said Leffler.

In South America, Brazil ranked among the hardest hit nations by the pandemic, while its neighbouring nation of Venezuela has, so far, kept a much lower death toll.

The study found that countries where citizens wore even improvised face masks made with household fabrics it was an effective way to curb the spread. The more people who were wearing makeshift masks, the better a country's fatality numbers could be.

A separate study conducted by Cambridge University earlier in June found very similar results, arguing that, “Research shows that even homemade masks made from cotton T-shirts or dishcloths can prove 90 per cent effective at preventing transmission,” It went on to read, “Crude homemade masks primarily reduce disease spread by catching the wearer’s own virus particles, breathed directly into fabric, whereas inhaled air is often sucked in around the exposed sides of the mask.”