Tanzina Vega: You're listening to The Takeaway, I'm Tanzina Vega. By now, most Americans know that wearing a mask is still one of the best ways to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus, but the guidance around what kind of mask people should wear is shifting. As new and more contagious variants of the Coronavirus make their way to the United States, public health officials are calling for people to wear masks that offer even more protection. Dr. Abraar Karan is an internal medicine physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a global health researcher at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Karan, thanks for joining me.
Dr. Abraar Karan: Thanks Tanzinam, happy to be on.
Tanzina: I have this huge mass collection, silk, cotton, synthetics. Are cloth masks no longer sufficient?
Dr. Karan: That's the question on everybody's mind now. I think of it less in terms of are they sufficient versus Are they the best protection that we can get? We've known since the start of the epidemic now that this virus transmits via both droplets and aerosols. We know that the latter are smaller particles that float around in the air, and they are most relevant in terms of indoor crowding, which more and more of us find ourselves in and many frontline workers have had to be in throughout the year. Yet only in the healthcare setting are we wearing the best protection we can, which are N95 masks, which really filter out 95% of these.
Tanzina: Dr. Karan, we've heard a lot about the N95, but we also are hearing about something called the KN95. Which one is better? Are they the same? N95 are hard to come by sometimes.
Dr. Karan: Absolutely. KN95 refer to masks that are actually certified in China. There's also KF94s, which are from South Korea. In Europe, they use FFP2s. These are all more or less equivalent. The problem is that the supply chain can be a little bit tricky because there are some counterfeit masks that are on the market that are that have come in over the year.
Tanzina: How do we know if something is counterfeit? If it's labeled with a company that we know, that's one of my big questions when I'm ordering masks now, how do we know it's legit?
Dr. Karan: Exactly. It's a great question. There is a list on the CDC website where they actually have companies that have had problems with counterfeits. There's a way for you to track the KN95 that you bought. Go to the CDC website and see if yours is on the list of ones that has had counterfeit issues. If it is, it doesn't mean that the one you own is not real, it just means you may have to touch base with the company. Some of them have batches with a certification code that's specific to the company to help with this problem.
Tanzina: Dr. Karan, that's a lot of work for people who are trying to get masks. Here in New York, people are selling them on the street. Should we trust those?
Dr. Karan: You're right., it is. It shouldn't be this way, right? It should not be just left to the American people to figure this out on their own. I mean, masks one of the best interventions we have. This is an emergency. We're in the middle of a pandemic. This really should be taken up by the CDC and our public health agencies and our government, to make sure that Americans don't have to go doing this legwork themselves.
Tanzina: Dr. Karan. Where can people buy masks, or where should they be buying masks to make sure they're legitimate? Is it okay to buy from places like Amazon?
Dr. Karan: Well, that is a question that's a little bit tricky because even on Amazon, the quality of different masks is going to be variable. There are some people that have been independently testing masks, and there is an agency, ASTM, which is going to be coming out very soon with actually a number of measurements of different masks that are on the market that they have done. There should be more coverage around this. I just spoke with some of the members of that team yesterday. I'm hopeful for that, but I don't know that CDC or any of the other agencies are officially working on this themselves.
Tanzina: You mentioned testing masks, is there something that people can do to test their own mask to see how protective it is?
Dr. Karan: Yes, well, one thing that is definitely testable right off the bat is the fit of the mask. We know that fit actually is a very big component of the ultimate protection that you get. A poorly fitting mask, even if it has good filtration material, may not provide you with the same level of protection that a good fitting mask would provide you with. A couple of things you can do is to see how much leakage you have. When you're breathing out, do you feel a lot of air coming out of the sides of your mask? That's one thing that I regularly do. There are some companies that are working specifically on this problem with mask braces, Fix The Mask is one of those. I tried a sample yesterday, and it significantly improve the fit of my mask.
Tanzina: I'm wondering also, a lot of folks have gotten masks made for them. Some of the first masks that I had were handmade by people I knew, should we not assume that homemade masks are enough, or should we be double masking?
Dr. Karan: That's a great question. In terms of enough, a mask is better than no mask, that there's no debate about. You should be wearing something. Now, if you have a cloth mask, one thing that you could do is wear a surgical mask, and then wear the cloth mask over that and make sure that the cloth mask has a very tight fit so that cloth mask can help improve the fit of your surgical mask. A couple of doctors and aerosol scientists actually looked into this and found that that could actually be a stopgap solution until we get better masks out to everybody else.
Tanzina: President Biden has rolled out some national mask mandates. How confident are you in those, and do you think that those are going to help more Americans get on board with wearing masks?
Dr. Karan: Well, absolutely, I think it will help in the sense that when you have federal support for something like this, it starts to enter just the general American dialogue. Masks may start to be seen as a tool to protect us, rather than as a political tool that divides us. I do think that it'll help. I know, the mandate is for federal grounds, and also for certain travel situations. We really need people be masking all high-risk situations. Anywhere with indoor crowding, and even within your own home if you've had an exposure, or somebody does have symptoms and you're concerned.
Tanzina: Dr. Karan, at the early stages of the pandemic we were being told that we should not purchase N95 masks. Are there enough N95 masks now for Americans to purchase who are not healthcare workers, or should we stay away from those?
Dr. Karan: Well, the supply is very fragmented around the country. In the hospital I work in in Boston, we don't seem to have any supply issue there. We can use an N95 per shift, and we're fine. In other parts of the country I'm seeing there's still recommendations for healthcare workers to not even be using N95 mask unless they're doing specifically an aerosol-generating procedure. I use N95s with any COVID patient that I'm taking care of. We know that over the last year there was a lot of investigative work done to see what gone wrong with the supply chain.
One of the issues was the Trump administration employed the Defense Production Act, but they never really did it to the extent that was needed. There was never enough supply, and they didn't distribute it either. They just left it up to states to figure out.
Tanzina: Well, we're going to have to leave it there, Dr. Karan. Hopefully people will heed the advice and mask up. Dr. Abraar Karan is an internal medicine physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a global health researcher at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Karan, thanks for joining me.
Dr. Karan: Thank you so much.
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