The mandating of masks during Melbourne’s COVID-19 second wave in July 2020 was the single-most important control measure and “turned the epidemic around”, new world-leading Burnet Institute research shows.
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, highlights the effectiveness and critical importance of masks as a key tool to prevent community spread of the highly infectious Delta variant in Australia and globally.
Co-lead author Dr Nick Scott said the introduction of mandatory mask use by the Victorian Government on 22 July 2020 while Stage 3 restrictions were in place, turned an exponential increase in community transmission into an exponential decrease, almost overnight.
“We had a unique situation in Melbourne where masks were made mandatory as a single policy change, and compliance went from low use to very high use of masks in the community very rapidly,” Dr Scott, Head of Burnet’s Modelling and Biostatistics Group, said...
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