These People Should Not Wear Face Masks Despite Pandemic According To CDC

May 26, 2020 02:43 AM By Jan Cortes

This article appeared on Medical Daily.

Wearing face masks is one of the first precautions that were put into place ever since the coronavirus outbreak was first declared as a pandemic. But should everyone wear them?

Should Everyone Wear Face Mask? 

When the coronavirus outbreak that stemmed from Wuhan, China, was first declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), one of the initial safety precautions that people were encouraged to follow is the wearing of face masks in order to ensure safety.

The precaution came after the coronavirus had been discovered to spread from person to person via air droplets that enter our respiratory system and wreak havoc there. As such, covering our mouth and nose with a surgical mask can help stop protect us from the virus, as well as help us stop it from spreading if we have it ourselves. Study and research has backed this as well. A recent study from Hong Kong found that wearing surgical masks can reduce the noncontact transmission of COVID-19 by as much as 75 percent, which is a pretty high number.

However, as it turns out, not everyone should be wearing face masks. For example, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children that are under the age of two years should not be wearing a face mask.

“Cloth face coverings should not be placed on young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance,” the CDC wrote on their website.

And while there are currently no federal government or Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rulings set that toddlers and babies traveling by plane should not wear face masks, a number of airlines (such as Frontier, Hawaiian Airlines, United and Delta) say that young children shouldn’t have to wear face masks whenever they travel on their planes.

As for everyone else, it’s imperative to wear face masks and practice social distancing while we’re at it.

“It’s really critically important, we have the scientific evidence of how important mask-wearing is to prevent those droplets from reaching others,” Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said.