End of the mask could put in check collective effort against Covid

Overturning the mandatory use of masks in closed environments, as the City of Rio de Janeiro decided last Monday (7), can send the message that collective efforts to fight the coronavirus are no longer necessary.

And even with the end of mandatory open spaces, as happened in the state of São Paulo, the ideal would be to take advantage of the moment to make the population aware of which strategies are still being adopted, such as expansion of testing, advancement of vaccination in children and reinforcement and reduction of agglomerations, which was not done either.

This is the assessment of experts consulted by the sheetwho are concerned about the relaxation of the rules for the use of one of the main measures to control the infection by the virus.

Two years after the Covid-19 pandemic was officially decreed by the WHO (World Health Organization), the safety protocols were very little or were not revised, said the engineer and director of monitoring and evaluation of public policies of the Municipality of Goiânia, Eric Sousa.

“The question of the importance of the use of masks is well endorsed, but some other strategies such as ventilation, CO2 monitoring and Hepa filters [que retêm partículas contaminadas no ar] have not been implemented”, he said, stressing that, with the removal of masks and without these other precautions, it is almost like “trying to cover the sun with a sieve”.

For Sousa, who is also a doctoral student in health science at the Federal University of Goiás, the use of masks to protect oneself from infection is analogous to the use of an umbrella. “If it’s raining, I’ll go out with an umbrella, to avoid getting wet, but I’ll also put on a coat, to prevent the cold and wind and not get pneumonia. The mask is like the umbrella. Vaccination is like the coat , it keeps my body protected. I need both equally.”

Researcher Lorena Barberia, professor in the political science department at USP, believes that there is a failure to announce the end of the mask requirement in open spaces and, in the next two weeks, the possibility of removal in closed places, as the governor of São Paulo did. São Paulo, João Doria (PSDB), this Wednesday (9).

“There is no withdrawal [da exigência da máscara] in open spaces to raise awareness about the risk or ventilation, but to make an allusion that today there is already a control of the pandemic, equating having control with wearing or not wearing masks. And that’s a mess,” Barberia said.

Barberia also recalled that the use of a mask is a relatively low-cost measure for public health, since expanding testing — or offering free tests — and making promising drugs available such as antiviral pills is much more difficult in a country like Brazil. “We’ve had a massive uptake of mask use since April 2020, even though this use was on the decline, it was something everyone did, like wearing a seat belt. It’s a shame to give it up without an awareness campaign.”

The view that it is necessary to value in the public debate the sum of measures, and not the withdrawal, is shared by biomedical Melanie Fontes-Dutra, a professor at Unisinos. “We have data that only physical distancing without a mask in open environments can bring the same risk as being in a closed environment. The mask remains very important”, she says.

For Barberia, the use of masks has a symbolic character of equality, and the withdrawal breaks that. “Now, the message remains that the mask is an individual choice whether you want to use it or not, and this break, in a society with unequal access like ours, only puts vulnerable people in a worse situation, when we should be taking care of them. each other, with solidarity.”

Epidemiologist Leonardo Bastos, responsible for Fiocruz’s InfoGripe bulletin, considers that collective protection will suffer the greatest impact, since those who chose not to wear masks will continue not to use them, but there is a contingent of people who felt inhibited from going out without and therefore used to fulfill mandatory measures.

“People will understand, with these measures, that masks are no longer necessary, and that is not what is being said. For the collective, this will have a direct effect, especially in groups where vaccination coverage is still not good.” , as in children, or in immunocompromised people,” he said.

Despite defending that masks do not need to be used in open environments, pulmonologist and researcher at Fiocruz Margareth Dalcolmo sees the release of use in closed spaces as premature. “You weaken such a potent measure and put other non-pharmacological measures at risk,” she said.

“In Brazil, we had good adherence to vaccination, and public health efforts should prioritize vaccination coverage in children and the booster dose, and not the flexibility of masks in closed spaces”, added Dalcolmo.