Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group Concludes Masks “Make Little or No Difference” in Spread of Viral Respiratory Illnesses

The craze over community masking has preoccupied the public and the questioning media, and thus, the paper from the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Illnesses Group by Jefferson et al, is an important summary to quote for the schools, employers, travel, and hospitals. This UK group is known to be exhaustive and fair balanced in their conclusions. — Dr. Peter McCullough

We included 11 new RCTs and cluster?RCTs (610,872 participants) in this update, bringing the total number of RCTs to 78.

Medical/surgical masks compared to no masks – Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza?like illness (ILI)/COVID?19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate?certainty evidence.

Authors’ conclusions –  The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection.

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full