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Transcript for Latest updates on COVID-19: June 8, 2020
developments we’re tracking right now, diagnosed cases of coronavirus across this country close in on 2 million. With now more than 110,000 Americans killed and more than 500,000 recovering. With me now is chief medical correspondent is Dr. Jen Ashton. We’ve been watching all of these large demonstrations sweep across this country, and health officials are concerned about a possible uptick in covid-19 cases. Most people wearing masks. There are still a lot of confusion among people about masks and you wanted to start talking about the n95 respirators. Yeah, what really got my attention in watching the footage, there seems to be a wide spectrum of people wearing them and not wearing them. Different type of masks. People wearing masks and getting inches away from people. Suggesting that they think a mask is a license to forget the social distancing precautions, which it is not. Again the deep dive, if you started looking at N95s, also K95s, these are specific types of masks that are called respirators, they’re in short supply for healthcare workers, their name comes out because they filter out at least 95% of airborne particles. They have to fit-tested. They’re not one size fits all. Ideally, it forms an airtight seal around someone’s face and the important thing with these types of masks, they offer protection for the person wearing the mask. What about surgical masks? Surgical masks is kind of an intermediary category. They’re still a part of ppe. But these the routine blue, they come in other colors that are not fit-tested. They leave gaps around edges of someone’s nose and mouth. They do help to block the escape of particles, during breathing, talking, yelling, coughing, that’s the point. And traditionally, we put them on sick people in hospital settings to protect others, so again, the purpose there is important. It is unknown at this point how effective they are at protecting the person wearing the mask. That’s the key thing that people are still confused about. They put on a mask, they feel protected. With this mask you’re really doing it for the protection for those around you. The mask I see the most now, which is the cloth mask, the homemade mask. For some historical perspective on this, when the CDC changed their recommendations and recommended basically cloth face coverings, they did so really without citing any scientific evidence, which is really unprecedented. There’s very little data on how effective these are at protecting others. They may have some benefit at blocking these largers viral particles from escaping and one of the possible theories is to why some Asian countries rapidly contained or slowed the spread of this virus is because so many people wear these kind of face coverings. We do need to learn more. This is evolving, evolving, evolving. All right, Dr. Jen, thank you very much.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
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