For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO website.
Grassroots campaigns across the US are urging residents to sew face masks at home for the medical community and for your own family’s protection. The trend comes at a time when the stock of certified N95 respirator masks — the protective equipment used by health care workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic — is critically low.
There’s just one problem: Handmade masks won’t be as effective at protecting you from the coronavirus, no matter how extreme the shortage of proven N95 masks. A self-made cotton mask certainly won’t harm you as long as you understand its limitations, but assuming it will shield you from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could put communities at greater risk if you’re not following other protocols to keep safe.
While many argue that using a homemade mask is better than nothing, staying away from senior citizens and people with compromised immune systems are more surefire ways to keep them safe. For people who don’t work in health care, staying home in self-isolation or self-quarantine, frequently and thoroughly washing your hands and practicing appropriate social distancing are the best ways to lower the risk of exposure for you, your family and your community.
Global leaders and medical professionals ask that you please not buy N95 masks for yourself, so as to save them for the medical community that’s in desperate need. For example, Target has apologized for selling N95 masks amid the shortage.
Coronavirus lockdown: Why social distancing saves lives
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N95 masks fit to your face and go through certification
N95 respirator masks differ from other types of surgical masks and face masks because they create a tight seal between the respirator and your face, which helps filter at least 95% of airborne particulates. They might include an exhalation valve to make it easier to breathe while wearing them. Coronavirus can linger in the air for up to 30 minutes and be transmitted from person to person through vapor (breath), coughing, sneezing, saliva and transfer over commonly touched objects.
Hospitals and medical centers are taking nontraditional steps to resupply their stock, asking for community donations of items like N95 masks, protective goggles and nitrile gloves. Some that do request hand-sewn masks note that donated masks will go to worried patients and nonclinical staff, not physicians and nurses.
Protective equipment is in such short supply at other hospitals and medical care centers that they’re now driven to use surgical masks or other masks if there’s no other option — and only during COVID-19 conditions. Some health centers suggest their preferred patterns and request that masks have four layers of fabric to better block out particulates. In these cases, personnel are asked to maintain a high level of caution (more on this in the CDC section below).
Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital and the Boston Children’s Hospital shared a joint video about making a homemade reusable respirator mask in response to the current shortage. However, the design is currently limited to a pilot program and is not certified for official use. Here’s the legal disclaimer:
The device created as part of this publication should NOT be used as a replacement for conventional and approved Personal Protective Equipment. The device has not been industry tested nor has it been NIOSH approved. The publication of this article shall not constitute or be deemed to constitute any representation by the authors, their affiliates, and Boston Children’s Hospital and is intended for educational purposes only. The decision to use this device is solely your own.
One example of a hand-sewn face mask pattern.
ButtonCounter.com
Handmade masks: Cotton and elastic
The DIY projects that provide patterns and instructions for sewing face masks at home tell you to use materials like multiple layers of cotton, elastic bands and ordinary thread.
By and large, the patterns contain simple folds with elastic straps to fit over your ears. Some are more contoured to resemble the shape of N95 masks. Still others contain pockets where you can add “filter media” that you can purchase elsewhere.
It’s the belief of people who make their own masks that adding filters will help protect against transmission. However, there isn’t strong evidence that the masks will conform to the face tightly enough to form a strong seal, or that the filter material inside will work effectively. Standard surgical masks, for example, are known to leave gaps.
Homemade masks weren’t originally intended to protect you from COVID-19
Many sites sharing patterns and instructions for homemade masks were created as a fashionable way to keep the wearer from breathing in large particles, like car exhaust, air pollution and pollen during allergy season. They were not conceived of as a way to protect you from acquiring COVID-19.
Due to recent coronavirus attacks across the world, I have been receiving a lot of requests on how to add nonwoven filter inside the face mask. Disclaimer: this face mask is not meant to replace the surgical face mask, it is a contingency plan for those who have no avail to surgical mask in the market. Proper use of a surgical mask is still the best way to prevent virus infection.
A video by manufacturer 3M demonstrates key differences between N95 and standard surgical masks.
3M/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s stance on homemade masks
The CDC is the US authority on coronavirus protocols and protection. Along with the World Health Organization, the CDC is the authoritative body that sets guidelines for the medical community to follow.
Acknowledging a shortage of N95 masks, one page on the CDC website suggests five alternatives if a health care provider, or HCP, doesn’t have access to an N95 mask. Handmade masks are not one of them. However, alternatives like wearing a full face shield or isolating the patient with a ventilated headboard are.
In settings where face masks are not available, HCP might use homemade masks (e.g., bandana, scarf) for care of patients with COVID-19 as a last resort [our emphasis]. However, homemade masks are not considered PPE, since their capability to protect HCP is unknown. Caution should be exercised when considering this option. Homemade masks should ideally be used in combination with a face shield that covers the entire front (that extends to the chin or below) and sides of the face.
A different page on the CDC site appears to make an exception, however, for conditions where no N95 masks are available, including homemade masks.
HCP use of non-NIOSH approved masks or homemade masks
In settings where N95 respirators are so limited that routinely practiced standards of care for wearing N95 respirators and equivalent or higher level of protection respirators are no longer possible, and surgical masks are not available, as a last resort, it may be necessary for HCP to use masks that have never been evaluated or approved by NIOSH or homemade masks. It may be considered to use these masks for care of patients with COVID-19, tuberculosis, measles, and varicella. However, caution should be exercised when considering this option.
Homemade masks aren’t sterilized
Factory-made masks from brands like 3M, Kimberly-Clark and Prestige Ameritech go through certification and are considered sterile out of the box, which is crucial in hospital settings. With handmade face masks, there’s no guarantee the mask is sterile or free from an environment with coronavirus.
The CDC considers N95 masks contaminated after each single use and recommends discarding them. However, the severe shortage of N95 masks has caused many hospitals to take extreme measures in an attempt to protect doctors and nurses, like attempting to decontaminate masks between use. One medical center in Nebraska, for example, is experimenting with ultraviolet light treatments to sterilize N95 masks.
The danger: Not knowing the limits
If you still want to make your own face masks for personal use because it provides you a project and peace of mind, there’s no harm in that. What’s important to understand, however, is that sewing your own face mask may not greatly reduce your chances of acquiring the coronavirus, especially if you’re also engaged in risky behavior like going to crowded places.
Since the coronavirus can be transmitted from someone who appears to be symptom-free but actually harbors the virus, it’s crucial to the health and wellness of people over 65 and those with underlying conditions to know which proven measures will help keep everyone safe.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.
The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.
Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.
Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.
“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.
But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.
That includes his own teenage daughter.
“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.
It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.
“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.
New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.
“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.
It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.
Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.
Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.
The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.
The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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