Mask cuts Covid linked health costs, reduces hospitalisation & death: Study 

As countries like the United Kingdom do away with mask mandates, a modelling study found that keeping face masks on, despite hitting a brisk pace of vaccination, can help save healthcare costs and reduce hospitalisation and death.

“Maintaining face mask use in public indoor spaces and on public transportation,for at least two weeks after Covid-19 vaccination targets (with a minimum of 70 percent), could have had proved to be cost-effective, typically cost-saving, and saves lives,” said the study published in The Lancet Public Health journal.

“Simulations of the US (United States) population indicate that continuing to use facemasks at the levels seen from March to July 2020 for between two and 10 weeks after reaching vaccination targets would save billions of dollars in societal and healthcare costs and greatly reduce hospitalisations and deaths due to COVID-19,” the study found.

Face masks were used in the US earlier in the pandemic, but many mask requirements put in place during delta and omicron surges have since been relaxed, despite vaccination rates still being below potential herd immunity thresholds, a note on the study said.

‘Overlapping protective measures needed’

Senior author Dr Bruce Y. Lee, with the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, USA, said the study findings emphasise that vaccination alone is not enough to control the pandemic and overlapping layers of protective measures were needed to limit economic impacts and deaths. “Our model represents the US population, but the breadth and scale of the simulated scenarios mean the results are also applicable to other countries,” he added.

The authors of this study developed a computational model representing the spread and impact of COVID-19 among more than 327 million people in the US and simulated the use of maintaining face mask use before and after achieving different vaccination coverage levels under a wide variety of circumstances, the note explained.

As per the note, in all simulated scenarios, it was cost-effective to maintain face mask use for somewhere between two and 10 weeks after hitting population vaccination targets. Maintaining mask use was always cost-effective, and usually cost-saving when the cost of mask-wearing per person per day was less than $1.25.

“The authors determined that the combination of N95, surgical, and cloth masks used in the US from March to July 2020 resulted in a cost of $0.32 per person per day,” the note said, highlighting the benefit of non-pharmaceutial interventions.

The lower the level of final population vaccination coverage, the greater the benefits of continued face mask use, it noted. “For example, if the USA achieved 90 percent vaccine coverage by May 1 2022, maintaining facemask use until then would avert $13.3 billion in societal costs and $2.4 billion direct medical costs, as well as 6.29 million COVID-19 cases, 136,700 hospitalizations, and 16,000 deaths.” The authors acknowledge some limitations regarding the use of models, which are simplifications of real-life and cannot account for every possible outcome, the note said. “Our findings offer some light at the end of the tunnel, suggesting that face mask use doesn’t have to continue forever, but that it remains an important tool to stop the spread of COVID-19 as we enter the next phase of the pandemic,” says Dr Peter Hotez of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (USA) and co-author of the study.

(eom)