AFP, published on Thursday 04 November 2021 at 12:57
When can we take off the mask? While the Covid-19 epidemic shows signs of recovery, we will still have to be patient before being able to abandon this barrier measure, according to experts.
Compulsory in enclosed public spaces, at work, on public transport or even on the decision of local authorities in high-density outdoor areas, the mask has been part of everyday life for the French for months now.
Priding themselves to be vaccinated, some however depart from the rule: “in offices where there are two-three, no one puts it”, tells AFP this employee of a public administration.
While many are tired of this constraint, the time for the end of the mask does not seem to have arrived.
On Wednesday, the government announced that it would be compulsory again from next week in primary schools in 39 departments, where the incidence rate has risen above the threshold of 50 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Despite a population more than 75% vaccinated, the coronavirus epidemic has been showing signs of recovery for several days.
A good reason especially not to relax the barrier gestures, of which the mask is part, insist the health authorities.
Alarmed at the “very worrying” rate of transmission of Covid-19 in Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on Thursday to continue vaccination, to massively use masks and to practice social distancing measures.
“Reliable projections show that if we achieve a 95% use rate of masks in Europe and Central Asia, we could save up to 188,000 lives out of the half a million lives we risk losing here. February 2022 “, noted the director of WHO Europe, Hans Kluge.
“Wearing a mask can prevent contamination as long as it is not made impossible by vaccination”, suggests Alexandre Nicolas, researcher at the CNRS. On the other hand, it is more difficult to define, according to him, “to what extent its port actually slows down the epidemic spread at this time”.
– “Better tolerated than confinement” –
“As long as the coronavirus causes long Covid, complications leading to hospitalization or death in substantial proportions, we will do everything to avoid contracting this virus”, assures for his part the epidemiologist Antoine Flahault.
And “to reduce the risk of infection, we now know that it is necessary to combine the effective measures such as the vaccine, the wearing of a mask indoors, ventilation in closed places”.
Some countries have taken the gamble of eliminating the wearing of masks, such as the United Kingdom in mid-July, or Denmark in September.
However, these countries are experiencing a much more unfavorable epidemiological situation than those of France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain or Portugal, which have kept it, pointed out Antoine Flahault.
“Without it being easy to attribute the totality of the deterioration of their situation to the only lifting of the wearing of the mask, it is probable that it played a role”, underlines the epidemiologist.
In Israel, indoor masks were lifted in June to be imposed again less than ten days later, in the face of increased contamination.
“The problem is that we are dealing with a pandemic and that we do not have global control for the moment, which prevents us from saying: + we release everything +”, launches Rodolphe Thiébaut, professor of public health at the University of Bordeaux and director of research at Inserm.
And even if it is restrictive, the wearing of a mask remains much better tolerated than confinement or a curfew, he emphasizes.
If the researcher does not venture to predict a date for the lifting of the obligation in France, he hopes that it will not be a “+ down the masks + definitive”. “We will probably have gotten into the habit of wearing a mask when we are sick and that is good news” to limit the spread of other viruses, he believes.
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