A question “Should you buy a face shield” have been recently all over the headlines? Face shields do not prevent the spread of COVID-19 but can help reduce transmission.
Here’s what the experts say:
Amesh Adalja MD, a pandemic preparedness expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, says, “There’s a lot of at least biological possibility to suspect that face shields are definitely better than homemade face masks, and maybe even better than other types of masks as well, because they not only prevent you from spreading it and because it also covers your eyes, it provides more protection to the mucus membranes of your face where you might be getting infected.”
David McKnightt MD, a clinical professor in primary care and population health at Texas A&M University, explains, “The goal is that if you sneeze or cough, a face shield minimizes the distance that the aerosol travels, hopefully lowering the risk of transmitting it to someone in the vicinity.”
Joe Suyama MD, chief of Emergency Medicine at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, says, ” Shields do not replace face masks, as they do not fit to your face and effectively block respiratory droplets from the air around you, face shields should be worn only with a face mask, not on their own.”
Kathryn Jacobsen, a professor in global health epidemiology at George Mason University, adds, “Most face shields do not cover the mouth and nose well enough to trap particles that wearers expel.”
James Cherry MD, a distinguished research professor and infectious disease expert at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says, “While experts aren’t yet sure about how vulnerable our eyes are to infection from this coronavirus, with many viruses, the eyes are important.”
Deborah L. Birx MD, White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, explained, “The thing about the face shields — we think that they could protect the individuals, and that it would decrease the ability for them to touch their eyes and spread the virus.”
Anthony Fauci MD, White House Coronavirus Task Force official, says, “If you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it, it’s not universally recommended, but if you really want to be complete, you should probably use it if you can. Theoretically, you should protect all the mucosal surfaces.”
William Lindsley MD, a research biomedical engineer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said that we should stick to cloth face coverings. “A cloth mask or a medical mask is going to do a better job of protecting you against the smaller particles than a face shield would.”
Anne Schucat MD, Principal Deputy Director with the CDC said, “I don’t think we have data yet that a shield is better or worse.”
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