Wearing masks at home ‘might help curb spread among family’

Wearing face masks at home might help stop Covid-19 from infecting family members who live in the same household, according to a new study.

This approach has been seen to be 79 per cent effective at curbing transmission but the masks need to be used before symptoms develop in anyone in the household who is infected.

The findings, which appear in BMJ Global Health, are based on answers from 124 families in Beijing, China, who had at least one confirmed case of Covid-19 infection, about their household hygiene and behaviour during the pandemic.

Disinfection was found to be 77 per cent effective at stopping the virus from being passed on.

There were a total of 460 people in the families who were part of the study and their confirmed case of Covid-19 happened between late February and late March 2020.

The family members had lived with the infected person for four days before and more than 24 hours after that person’s symptoms first appeared.

Research in China has suggested that most of the person-to-person transmission in the outbreaks of of SARS-COV-2, the coronavirus which is responsible for Covid-19 infection, has occurred in families.

The new study sought to see whether wearing a face mask, along with measures such as social distancing and disinfection, might help tackle household transmission rates.

The families, which were usually made up of three generations, ranged in size from two to nine people but had an average of four members.

The researchers looked at the risks of catching the virus within the incubation period, which is 14 days from the start of the infected person’s symptoms.