Mask wearing in community settings reduces SARS-CoV-2 transmission

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Abstract

We resolve conflicting results regarding mask wearing against COVID-19. Most previous work focused on mask mandates; we study the effect of mask wearing directly. We find that population mask wearing notably reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission (mean mask-wearing levels corresponding to a 19% decrease in R). We use the largest wearing survey (n = 20 million) and obtain our estimates from regions across six continents. We account for nonpharmaceutical interventions and time spent in public, and quantify our uncertainty. Factors additional to mask mandates influenced the worldwide early uptake of mask wearing. Our analysis goes further than past work in the quality of wearing data–100 times the size with random sampling–geographical scope, a semimechanistic infection model, and the validation of our results.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.16.21258817: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


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