THURSDAY, April 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) – States that required masking in the past year had lower COVID-19 rates than states with no mask requirements, according to a new study.
The researchers examined data from all 50 states and Washington, DC to assess mask guidelines, self-reported use of masks in public, and COVID rates from May to October 2020.
They took into account a one-month delay between wearing the mask and the subsequent possible impact on COVID infection rates.
“States with the lowest mask liability rates most likely had high COVID-19 rates in the following month, regardless of mask policies or demographic factors,” the Boston University team recently wrote on the medRxiv preprint server, ahead of their peer-reviewed findings.
Charlie Fischer of Boston University’s School of Public Health led the study. The final verified results were published in the journal PLOS ONE on April 14th.
The study rated the COVID rate of over 200 cases per 100,000 residents as high – and the researchers reported that 14 out of 15 states that didn’t require people to wear masks in public belonged to this category.
They found that none of the eight states with 75% or more self-reported public mask use had high COVID rates.
These eight states had an average infection rate of 109.26 per 100,000 population for the following month, compared with 249.99 per 100,000 in states with less than 75% public masks.
“This protective effect of wearing masks was evident over four months of the pandemic, even after the associations regarding mask policy, removal policy and demographic factors were adjusted,” Fischer and her colleagues said in a press release in a magazine.
States had different guidelines on mask use, and the authors said understanding the relationship between mask use and COVID rates will serve as a guide to guidelines for reducing pandemic pressures on health systems, economic instability and death could.
They suggested that public health policies and efforts to reduce the spread of COVID should focus on increasing mask use nationwide.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more information on COVID-19 and masks.
SOURCE: PLOS ONE, press release, April 14, 2021
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