"Tam offers new advice: wear a non-medical mask when shopping or using public transit
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer has new advice for Canadians: wear a non-medical face mask to help cut down the spread of the novel coronavirus when they are in situations where they can’t ensure proper physical distance from strangers.
Dr. Theresa Tam said this would help in scenarios such as shopping in the grocery store or riding public transit.
“Canadians can take this additional measure [in] instances where social distancing is difficult to maintain,” she told a noon briefing in Ottawa Monday.
Dr. Tam offered advice on how to make a non-medical mask, saying Canadians could use a cotton shirt for instance, combined with rubber bands.
“We’re talking about things that are readily available in people’s homes,” she said. “Things like cotton shirts, sheets, bandanas.”
“If you can get a cotton material like a T-shirt, you cut it up, you fold it and put elastic bands around it – this is a non-medical facial covering.”
Dr. Tam said this measure is now being advised to help cut down on transmission by Canadians who are infected by the virus but are asymptomatic or presymptomatic.
“Our collective scientific knowledge of COVID-19 continues to grow,” she said.
“It is clear that transmission of the virus is happening more often than previously recognized from infected people right before they develop symptoms,” she said. “This is called presymptomatic transmission.”
She said the same goes for people who never develop symptoms: the asymptomatic.
“A non-medical mask can reduce the chance of your respiratory droplets coming into contact with others or land[ing] on surfaces,” Dr. Tam said.
The announcement Monday represents a new decision from medical experts in Canada. Dr. Tam said the Special Advisory Committee – which includes her and provincial and territorial chief public health officers – made it together.
“With this emerging information, the special advisory committee on COVID-19 has come to a consensus that wearing a non-medical mask, even if you have no symptoms, is an additional measure that you can take to protect others around you in situations where physical distancing is difficult to maintain.”
Public health officials were pressed Monday to explain why they’re only advising these makeshift masks now, a number of weeks after Canada began fighting the pandemic.
Dr. Tam said the evidence about presymptomatic and asymptomatic cases only accumulated in the last 10 days or so.
“These are very recent studies … so we very rapidly try to integrate that latest science,” she told reporters.
“Just before they develop symptoms, [people] have high viral loads,” she said. “And so that tells us the possibility is there they can transmit.”
Dr. Tam said public health officials in Canada still don’t know exactly how important transmission from presymptomatic or asymptomatic cases are driving this epidemic.
The Chief Public Health Officer emphasized this new advice does not confer better protection on the mask user, but is recommended to protect others.
She said this advice is a “permissive statement” offered to help reduce transmission and does not constitute an official recommendation.
The Chief Public Health Officer said as of Monday morning there were 15,822 COVID-19 cases in Canada and 293 deaths.
She said “most concerning” are the new outbreaks in hospitals and long-term care facilities in several provinces.
“As well, we are hearing of young people being hospitalized due to COVID-19 and people as young as in their 20s dying of the disease,” she said.
Dr. Tam urged Canadians not to turn to medical masks for this preventive measure recommended Monday.
More than 339,000 people in Canada have been tested to date with about 5 per cent confirmed as positive, she said Monday.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/can...ar-a-non-medical-mask-when-shopping-or-using/
