Inkstone: Coronavirus: health researchers urge global authorities to consider broadening use of face masks.
As the spread of the virus accelerates outside East Asia, some experts have called on global health authorities to rethink the role of masking.
In an article published in the medical journal Lancet, a group of health researchers argued that the coronavirus has “defied conventional containment strategy” because patients at the early stages of infection may have no or only vague symptoms while being infectious.
“People wear masks to protect themselves in close person-to-person contacts, but unintentionally, they are protecting each other through source control,” -Chi Chiu Leung, Tai Hing Lam and Kar Keung Cheng