Title: Association of social distancing and masking with risk of COVID-19.

Authors: Kwon, Sohee; Joshi, Amit D; Lo, Chun-Han; Drew, David A; Nguyen, Long H; Guo, Chuan-Guo; Ma, Wenjie; Mehta, Raaj S; Warner, Erica T; Astley, Christina M; Merino, Jordi; Murray, Benjamin; Wolf, Jonathan; Ourselin, Sebastien; Steves, Claire J; Spector, Tim D; Hart, Jaime E; Song, Mingyang; VoPham, Trang; Chan, Andrew T

Published In medRxiv, (2020 Nov 13)

Abstract: Given the continued burden of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) disease (COVID-19) across the U.S., there is a high unmet need for data to inform decision-making regarding social distancing and universal masking. We examined the association of community-level social distancing measures and individual masking with risk of predicted COVID-19 in a large prospective U.S. cohort study of 198,077 participants. Individuals living in communities with the greatest social distancing had a 31% lower risk of predicted COVID-19 compared with those living in communities with poor social distancing. Self-reported masking was associated with a 63% reduced risk of predicted COVID-19 even among individuals living in a community with poor social distancing. These findings provide support for the efficacy of mask-wearing even in settings of poor social distancing in reducing COVID-19 transmission. In the current environment of relaxed social distancing mandates and practices, universal masking may be particularly important in mitigating risk of infection.

PubMed ID: 33200150

MeSH Terms: No MeSH terms associated with this publication