Door Signs to Promote Public Droplet Safety Amidst COVID-19
Oral and respiratory droplets, which may carry respiratory pathogens, including COVID-19, are always produced as we talk, cough, or sneeze.
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Current health guidelines suggest the use of cloth masks. Unfortunately, their use in public is not widely adopted.
A great choice to help motivate the use of face covers, now and in future pandemics, could be the voluntary and synchronized use of door signs which may serve as gentle reminders to promote droplet public safety among the public, in both public and private locales.
Because a ‘scarf’ is not a mask, but could serve for ‘droplet control’, it is advisable to use more inclusive expressions or terms, such as Facecovers, to improve their adoption and increase the cleanliness of our environment.
To avoid confusion, droplet control signs should make a distinction between ‘textile facecovers’ and ‘medical facemasks’ to not promote the purchase of medical supplies, which are needed by health workers.
Various household textiles, especially in multiple layers, can retain liquid droplets, as effectively as medical facemasks.
Fresh and Recent evidence on the value of facecovers and textiles can be found here:
✺Howard, J. et al. Face Masks Against COVID-19: An Evidence Review. Preprints 2020, 2020040203
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1.
✺ Rodriguez-Palacios A. et al. Textile Masks and Surface Covers - A 'Universal Droplet Reduction Model' Against Respiratory Pandemics, medRxiv 2020.04.07.20045617; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.07.20045617.
✺ Rodriguez-Palacios A. et al. Nonmedical Masks in Public for Respiratory Pandemics: Droplet Retention by Two-Layer Textile Barrier Fully Protects Germ-free Mice from Bacteria in Droplets. bioRxiv 2020.04.06.028688; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.06.028688
Images Copyright © 2020 by Alex Rodriguez-Palacios. Published 04.26.2020. License Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0). For high-resolution editable files or for commercial use contact: axr503@icloud.com
