Experts have advised against healthy people panic buying face masks to protect themselves from the novel coronavirus. Public health officials say the high demand for the masks has led to a shortage for the medical personnel coping with the epidemic, who do need them.
The World Health Organization says healthy people only need to wear masks when they are coming in direct contact with people who are sick or suspected of infection and not in the general public.
Health-care providers who can’t get masks are at risk, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams says, and that in turn raises the overall risk to the community.
Infected providers are at a higher risk of spreading the virus to the uninfected and once sick can’t look after patients which would lead to more and more deaths.
The Journal of the American Medical Association says that there is no evidence masks protect ordinary people going about their daily business.
So far the number of people around the world known to have died as a result of the pandemic have reached 6,706.