Story at a glance
- With more contagious variants of COVID-19 spreading, some public health experts advocate wearing two masks at once.
- CDC guidelines still recommend one mask.
As new cases of more contagious COVID-19 strains are popping up across the U.S., more public health officials are vocalizing support for double masking, or wearing two face coverings simultaneously to guard against COVID-19 transmission.
There are a few ways to go about double masking. Some experts, like former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Tom Frieden, have advised the public to upgrade from cloth masks to medical-grade masks, including N95 models to reduce the risk of infection.
Consider upgrading from a cloth mask to a surgical mask, or from a surgical mask to an N95/KN95/equivalent if available. Better masks may help reduce risk from more-contagious strains.
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) January 25, 2021
Others, like Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, advocate layering two masks atop each other, either using a surgical mask as the first layer covered by a cloth mask, or using two cloth masks.
“If you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective, and that’s the reason why you see people either double masking or doing a version of an N95,” Fauci said earlier.
However, The Washington Post noted that during a CNN appearance, Fauci adhered to existing CDC guidelines, which do not explicitly recommend double masking. New CDC head Rochelle Walensky added that N95s can be uncomfortable and may undermine federal initiatives to promote consistent mask-usage.
Cloth masks rose to prominence as medical grade masks, or personal protective equipment, was scarce at the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. With former President Trump and current President Biden having invoked the Defense Production Act to increase the manufacturing and supply of masks, more surgical and medical-grade masks have been available.
Speaking to the Post, Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, said that outside of a medical-grade face mask, the public’s best bet against spreading or contracting COVID-19 is wearing a reusable cloth mask atop a surgical mask.
“Those standard cloth masks might be around 50 percent effective in terms of protecting yourself,” Marr added. “Maybe that was good enough before when combined with distancing and trying to avoid being in crowded indoor spaces.”
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