{"id":6772,"date":"2024-06-05T12:26:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T17:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=6772"},"modified":"2024-06-05T12:26:10","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T17:26:10","slug":"relative-efficacy-of-masks-and-respirators-as-source-control-for-viral-aerosol-shedding-from-people-infected-with-sars-cov-2-a-controlled-human-exhaled-breath-aerosol-experimental-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/06\/05\/relative-efficacy-of-masks-and-respirators-as-source-control-for-viral-aerosol-shedding-from-people-infected-with-sars-cov-2-a-controlled-human-exhaled-breath-aerosol-experimental-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Relative efficacy of masks and respirators as source control for viral aerosol shedding from people infected with SARS-CoV-2: a controlled human exhaled breath aerosol experimental study"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/ebiom\/article\/PIIS2352-3964(24)00192-0\/fulltext\">The Lancet<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Background<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Tight-fitting masks and respirators, in manikin studies, improved aerosol source control compared to loose-fitting masks. Whether this translates to humans is not known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Methods<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We compared efficacy of masks (cloth and surgical) and respirators (KN95 and N95) as source control for SARS-CoV-2 viral load in exhaled breath of volunteers with COVID-19 using a controlled human experimental study. Volunteers (N&nbsp;=&nbsp;44, 43% female) provided paired unmasked and masked breath samples allowing computation of source-control factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Findings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>All masks and respirators significantly reduced exhaled viral load, without fit tests or training. A duckbill N95 reduced exhaled viral load by 98% (95% CI: 97%\u201399%), and significantly outperformed a KN95 (p&nbsp;&lt;&nbsp;0.001) as well as cloth and surgical masks. Cloth masks outperformed a surgical mask (p&nbsp;=&nbsp;0.027) and the tested KN95 (p&nbsp;=&nbsp;0.014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Interpretation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>These results suggest that N95 respirators could be the standard of care in nursing homes and healthcare settings when respiratory viral infections are prevalent in the community and healthcare-associated transmission risk is elevated.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lancet Background Tight-fitting masks and respirators, in manikin studies, improved aerosol source control compared to loose-fitting masks. Whether this translates to humans is not known. Methods We compared efficacy of masks (cloth and surgical) and respirators (KN95 and N95) as source control for SARS-CoV-2 viral load in exhaled breath of volunteers with COVID-19 using [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-published-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6773,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6772\/revisions\/6773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}