No masks? Barriers are better than social distancing

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-05-06 04:00

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During activities like eating, when masks cannot be worn, we should be using barriers, according to a US high school student whose simple experiment earned them a published paper in PLOS One. The student put fluorescent paint inside a mannequin head and exploded a balloon out of the mannequin’s mouth to simulate a real cough, then used a black light to look at droplet spread. The student noted that when the mannequin was ‘wearing’ a facemask, the masks worked very well, but without masks and barriers, social distancing was not very effective. He suggests that during activities when masks cannot be worn, barriers should be used to prevent the spread of COVID-19.