News RSS

Must see on face masks. When to wear them and who wears them.

Live view of the latest Corona numbers worldwide! The numbers on screen is based on combination of government announcement and news media, and updated with official numbers by the authorities once a day.

Cheryl Man is usually the only one wearing a face mask on her New York City subway train. She notices this, but other people on the train notice, too. Usually she just gets odd stares from other commuters. But on Tuesday morning, when she was walking to school, a group of teens jeered at her and coughed in her direction. “I felt very humiliated and misunderstood,” says Man, a 20-year-old student and research assistant who is ethnically Chinese. Man also feels the stigma at her workplace, where she keeps her mask on. None of her colleagues wear a face mask, and some of them have asked her if she is sick. “Why do they think it’s about me? It’s a civic duty,”...

Can wearing a medical face mask protect you against the new coronavirus? It's a question many people are asking, including pet owners who are putting canine face masks on their dogs. If it's a regular surgical face mask, the answer is no, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, told Live Science.    A more specialized mask, known as an N95 respirator, can protect against the new coronavirus, also called SARS-CoV-2. The respirator is thicker than a surgical mask, but neither Schaffner nor the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) recommend it for public use, at least not at this point. That's because, in part, it's challenging to put on these masks and wear them for long...