{"id":120419,"date":"2021-11-19T15:48:21","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T22:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120419"},"modified":"2021-11-19T15:48:21","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T22:48:21","slug":"mask-wearing-cuts-covid-19-risk-in-half-new-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/19\/mask-wearing-cuts-covid-19-risk-in-half-new-study-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Mask wearing cuts Covid-19 risk in half, new study shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>As Covid-19 makes a comeback in Europe, one study offers a reminder that simple measures like mask-wearing and hand-washing help to ward off the disease.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Donning a face mask more than halves the risk of getting Covid, according to a review of eight studies published in the British Medical Journal. So does hand-washing. Physical distancing, meantime, cuts the risk by a quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The findings come amid evidence that vaccination efforts weren\u2019t enough to prevent a resurgence as temperatures drop and people crowd indoors, forcing countries including Austria and the Netherlands to introduce curbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is likely that further control of the Covid-19 pandemic depends not only on high vaccination coverage and its effectiveness but also on ongoing adherence to effective and sustainable public-health measures,\u201d authors including Stella Talic, the study\u2019s lead researcher and an epidemiologist at Monash University in Melbourne, said in the paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The scientists struggled to evaluate the public-health measures and said they couldn\u2019t assess other efforts such as quarantines, lockdowns and school closures because studies were too disparate. They called for more research, saying their findings were limited by a lack of reliable and comparable data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An accompanying editorial in the BMJ said funding on public-health measures accounts for just 4% of global Covid research.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Considering the central importance of public health and social measures for pandemic control, the uncertainties and controversies around their effects, and the immense research effort being put into vaccine and drug development, this lack of investment in public health measures is puzzling,\u201d Paul Glasziou, the director of the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare at Australia\u2019s Bond University, wrote in the editorial with scientists from the U.K. and Norway.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Glasziou and his colleagues also sought to explain the researchers\u2019 hand-washing finding &#8212; a surprising conclusion considering coronavirus transmission in mostly airborne. The results may reflect how people who wash hands frequently tend to take other steps as well.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is likely that hand-washing is a marker for several protective behaviors such as avoiding crowds, distancing, and mask wearing,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><em><strong>Source: Bloomberg<\/strong><br>-Agencies<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana As Covid-19 makes a comeback in Europe, one study offers a reminder that simple measures like mask-wearing and hand-washing help to ward off the disease.&nbsp; Donning a face mask more than halves the risk of getting Covid, according to a review of eight studies published in the British Medical Journal. So does hand-washing. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}