MASKS NOW ENCOURAGED
New data alters advice
Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, is recommending Canadians wear masks — less than two months after being dismissive of their use.
The changed position comes a day after she appeared before the Commons health committee and appeared to acknowledge that closing the U.S. border should have happened faster.
Tam’s new mask directive comes as stay-at-home orders are lifting in different provinces and more people are going outside, riding public transit, or visiting stores.
“This will help us reopen and add another layer to how you go out safely,” Tam said Wednesday in her daily briefing to Canadians on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tam recommended Canadians wear non-medical face masks in public when they aren’t sure they will be able to keep their distance from others.
The advice is slightly stronger than the suggestions over the last couple of weeks that people should consider wearing a face mask in public.
But it is a complete turnaround from her advice seven weeks ago that people who are not sick should not be wearing a face mask at all.
At the end of March, Tam appeared dismissive of mask use, saying “most people haven’t learned how to use masks” and “there is no need to use a mask for well people.”
Later she said “putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial.”
Tam’s new advice comes as she said initially it was believed the novel coronavirus was spreading only by people showing symptoms. That understanding has changed, as it is now known people could transmit the virus days before symptoms show up. Some patients might never show symptoms at all and could still spread the virus to others.
She said that, in future respiratory outbreaks, wearing face masks might become a normal part of the public health response. She did not suggest she regretted recommending against using face masks earlier.
She said the tried-andtrue public health measures of testing, contact tracing, handwashing and physical distancing had worked to slow the spread of COVID-19 in Canada.
The shift in advice came Wednesday with the sight of more MPs and cabinet ministers arriving in masks on Parliament Hill for the weekly in-person COVID-19 committee sitting.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would be wearing a face mask whenever he felt he could stay two metres away from others outside his home.
Some countries have made wearing face masks mandatory in public, including Spain, which enacted such a rule this week. Tam said mandatory mask use across Canada did not make sense because the risk was far different in the Yukon or Prince Edward Island than it was in Montreal or Toronto.
She said local health officials may choose to make the recommendation for face masks mandatory in their jurisdictions.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Tam appeared before the Commons health committee where she was pressed repeatedly by Bloc Québécois MP Luc Thériault on whether in hindsight she would have recommended closing the U.S. border earlier.
Tam finally appeared to agree that it could have been closed faster.
“Going backwards, could you have done it faster? Possibly. I mean, I think that is something that definitely could have happened faster,” Tam said.
She added, “In hindsight, yes, I think people could act faster and maybe in the future we would take different decisions and that remains to be looked at in lessons learned.”
MAYBE IN THE FUTURE WE WOULD TAKE DIFFERENT DECISIONS.