David Lazer Featured in Al Jazeera: Two Masks are Better than One in Fight Against COVID: US CDC
Wearing two masks at once can offer more protection against potential coronavirus transmission and exposure than donning a single mask, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has advised.
In a report published this week, CDC researchers said exposure to potentially infectious aerosols decreased by about 95 percent when a cloth mask was worn over a medical procedure mask, a practice also known as double-masking.
Mask-wearing outside the home recently reached an all-time high in the US at 80 percent, according to a survey conducted by experts at Harvard, Northwestern, Northeastern and Rutgers universities in December and January.
But David Lazer, a professor at Northeastern University and one of the survey authors, told NPR last month that more needs to be done to reduce the spread of the virus.
“The good news is we’ve improved a lot in terms of mask-wearing and social distancing. The bad news is, to bend the curve they really need to be much better,” Lazer said.