Many people have regained their guard, as the highly transmissible Delta variant has made its way through the United States, increasing the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Some people have resorted to wearing masks wherever they go, while others have reserved pandemic needs. Stores like Costco have already had to reset the time limits for shopping as people re-hoard toilet paper and bottled water. And now, another essential COVID is selling out quickly, prompting a warning from doctors. Read on to find out which product is right for you now, as it is completely sold out.
Children’s masks are in high demand as schools open backups, according to The Wall Street Journal. Happy Masks, a popular mask company that sells a five-layer children’s mask with a polyester outer layer and three filters, told the newspaper that the 22 designs are currently out of stock. Now customers have to adhere to a waiting list to potentially get one of these masks, even though the company replenishes them twice a week.
According to the founders, who attended MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Business School, masks provide 99.9% bacterial and viral filtration. Happy Masks has had almost fanatical follow-up and has been recommended by coast-to-coast doctors, including those at Nupur Kumar, DO, family medicine physician based in Los Angeles. “I always recommend this mask,” she says on the company’s website, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I speak as a mother and it’s about protecting your family.”
The manufacturers behind Flo Mask, a children’s mask made in part from liquid silicone rubber and claiming to leak more than 99.8% of viruses, say their masks are currently sold out, and no new shipments are expected. until the end of this month.
At the beginning of the pandemic, children were not a major concern, as they did not become infected at the same rate or severity as adults. But things have certainly changed. According to data released Sept. 13 by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), there were more than 243,000 new cases of COVID among children over the past week, an increase of nearly 240% since early July, when children accounted for nearly 70,000 cases.
“After declining in early summer, children’s cases have increased exponentially with nearly 500,000 cases in the last two weeks,” the AAP said.
COVID vaccines are not yet approved for children under the age of 12 in the U.S. and current projections do not provide for the approval of vaccination for younger age groups before the end of October, which is why many parents are looking for impatience highly effective masks.
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According to the WSJ, highly effective children’s masks are being sold more as parents are concerned about school-related outbreaks due to the Delta variant and because normal fabric masks have been considered less effective in the midst of this highly transmissible iteration. of COVID. A peer-to-peer study for publication in the journal Science and preprinted on 31 August, the effectiveness of different masks against the spread of COVID among 340,000 adults in 600 villages in rural Bangladesh was analyzed. According to the study, fabric masks offer a filtration efficiency of only 37%, compared to 95% of surgical masks made from three layers of 100% nonwoven polypropylene.
“Fabric masks can be 10 or 20 percent effective, [which is] not fantastic against the Delta variant ” Ashish Jha, MD, dean of Brown School of Public Health, said during an appearance on Sept. 5 Fox News Sunday. “Given the Delta variant out there, you’ll probably need to upgrade the mask.”
Michael OsterholmThe doctor, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told STAT News, who said he should specifically bring children with N95 to school, and noted that the masks of fabric does not protect against a variant as contagious as Delta. During an interview with CNN in early August, Osterholm said many of the widely used facial masks do not live up to the challenge of preventing the spread of Delta, saying it was time for people to fabric mask update. “We need to talk about better masking,” he argued. “We need to talk about N95 respirators, which would be very useful for people who are not yet vaccinated or who are not previously infected. Protect them and keep other people who may become infected after being vaccinated from breathing the virus “.
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Despite new research on the effectiveness of fabric masks, it may be the best option if other children’s masks are sold out. Any mask is better than no mask, Megan Ranney, MD, an emergency care physician and associate team at Brown University School of Public Health, told WSJ.
“The best mask is the best quality mask your child will tolerate,” Ranney added. Scientists told the mask of a child that it should be sealed against the face without spaces that allow air to escape, as well as have a metal bridge of the nose that can be contoured to the nose of the child. his son. WSJ.
John Volckens, A doctor, professor and aerosol scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, also told the press that if you have to wear a cloth mask for your child, either for availability or convenience, you can do it. the most effective by adding a filter coat or a surgical mask if your child can tolerate double masking.
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