As supply of N95-style respirators grows
Since the pandemic began, masking recommendations in Canada have centred on the idea of protecting others: my mask protects you, your mask protects me. However, more contagious and potentially more dangerous variants of COVID-19 have some asking if it's time for an upgrade, so that people can rely on their masks to protect themselves as well as others.To get more news about famous mask stock, you can visit tnkme.com official website.
Until recently, the supply of high-grade masks such as N95 respirators was limited, so they were mainly reserved for front-line health workers. The public was urged to rely on cloth masks to help limit the potential spread of droplets containing the virus from the nose and mouth.
However, the supply of N95 respirators for front line-medical staff has now caught up to demand in Canada and imports are more prolific. As a result, N95s and their international equivalents — such as the KN95 from China and KF94s from Korea — are becoming more widely available to average consumers. This has some advocating for their wider use in the community, and calling on Health Canada to change its messaging around which masks the public wear.
"In Canada we've always been reactive. We've always done things a little too late, a little too little," said Dr. Kashif Pirzada, an emergency physician in Toronto.Pirzada is the co-founder of a group called Masks4Canada, which pushed to make public masking mandatory early in the pandemic. More recently, the group co-wrote an open letter to the government urging it to acknowledge what Masks4Canada, along with over 600 Canadian and international experts say is an overwhelming amount of evidence showing the virus is airborne.
"It's one of the best explanations of why it's spreading. And if we remember a very related virus, SARS-CoV-1, was airborne as well," Pirzada said. "Even if it's not airborne, we know [COVID-19] is more transmissible, so at least we can be more proactive about it and a higher quality mask may help. I think that's enough to really promote it right now."
The study also found that the FFE of cloth and surgical masks can be increased with modifications that improve fit, such as double masking or tucking and knotting a surgical mask.
Other studies, including research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), indicate that the snug fit of N95 masks prevents air leakage, which is part of the reason they outperform many other surgical masks when filtering out droplets infected with the COVID-19 virus.Pirzada says the wider use of N95-style masks could be key to stopping some of the outbreaks seen across the country, such as the one at the Canada Post Facility in Mississauga, Ont., where 273 employees contracted COVID-19 in January.
"Distribute and require advanced masks like N95s in crowded workplaces or at-risk workplaces, and help people get them to do common grocery shopping and other things," he said.What Pirzada is suggesting may sound like a leap from Canada's current masking guidelines and policies, but it is not unprecedented. Earlier this year, some countries in Europe started mandating the use of N95-style masks in public, including the Czech Republic, the German state of Bavaria and Austria.
In Europe these respirators are called FFP2 masks, named after the European filtration standard of 94 per cent they are required to meet.
"The FFP2 mask does provide better protection to the person wearing it, which is also an incentive to increase compliance," Dr. Katharine Reich, the Chief Medical Officer of Austria, told CBC News.
"We wanted to increase compliance, because we often saw people who were wearing the masks down the nose and under the chin. The FFP2 masks are much more of a rigid material, so the proper wearing of this mask is much easier."
