Bini Araia from local charity IPC is encouraging us all to wear facemasks and is inviting people to a conversation about facemasks on Zoom. 

Please support and collaborate with others to bring about a life-saving effort to encourage everyone to make home-made cloth masks to wear in places where social distancing is difficult. This needs to become our social norm for a little while to help us all to keep Covid-19 at bay.

Join me on Zoom at 11am on Thursday 4 June for a conversation about facemasks, details at the end of this blog.

The benefits of wearing a mask is to protect others: My mask protects you; your mask protects me

If we all adopt three key steps, we can make a difference: hand hygiene + social distancing + mask wearing = lower transmission of Covid‐19.

This is beginning to be recognised and publicised, but more of us need to take action so that the majority of us wear masks where social distancing is difficult e.g. public transport, shared car journeys and shopping. Mask wearing is particularly useful in instances where people are asymptomatic and don’t know that they are infectious.

We all know that there is a shortage of PPE, therefore protecting the availability of medical masks and reducing transmission of the virus is vital.

Countries that moved the fastest to adopt public health measures including mask wearing have the lowest Covid‐19 transmission rates. Various countries have recommended that wearing a mask, even a homemade cloth mask, is one of the key contributing factors to help to support infection control, e.g. Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Israel and Czech Republic.

There is enough evidence to support a big ask for everyone to make and wear a mask in crowded busy places. We all need to do what we can to help to reduce the transmission of the disease and to avoid further lockdowns. The sight of people pouring outside to enjoy the sunshine during the Bank Holiday weekend spells trouble. Wearing masks should now be the norm where there is a higher risk of infection.

People will not travel to work or school nor enter businesses if they do not feel safe. Homemade cloth masks can help keep us safe, restore public confidence and reduce fear. Above all, making our own masks is harmless and it will not rob key workers of PPE.

Please spread the word and encourage this positive effort. We all need to take responsibility for this to make it happen.

Zoom meeting details

11am Thursday 4 June

To join the Zoom meeting use this link below. If you have any issues or queries contact John Atkinson john.atkinson@mvdauk.org.uk

https://zoom.us/j/2710394742?pwd=UlNMLzNxdnBrZXkzK3NUaWxSeEhiQT09

Meeting ID: 271 039 4742
Password: 069346

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