The highly contagious COVID-19 variants have experts urging everyone to wear much more protective masks. For months, much of the public has worn a bandana or a cloth mask, but now it’s being said that what worked in the past may no longer be good enough.
Because of the variants, experts are now pushing for people to wear KN95 or KF94 masks.
“We have one big problem in front of us, and that is this new variant starting to circulate across the United States,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told Inside Edition. “We’ve now known for several months that there are higher quality masks. They are what are called KF94s from South Korea that are really high quality. Surgical masks can be high quality.”
KF94 masks and KN95 masks have between three and five layers of filtration. Once difficult to find, they are now readily available online.
Jha said that not all cloth masks are of the same quality.
“Cloth masks can be OK, but to be really high quality they have to have a filter, they have to have multiple layers, they have to fit really well,” Jha said.
You can also double up on masks for extra protection. But think twice about wearing a bandana.
“Bandanas are really poor quality. Maybe marginally better than nothing, but not much better,” Jha said.
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