ReviewHealth affairs (Project Hope)2020
Community Use Of Face Masks And COVID-19: Evidence From A Natural Experiment Of State Mandates In The US.
Review in Health affairs (Project Hope), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 309 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Leveraging Community Health Workers to Improve COVID-19 Testing and Mitigation Among Criminal Justice-involved Individuals Accessing a Corrections-focused Community-based Organization
Impact of Face Masks on the Six Minute Walking Distance in Pulmonary Hypertension Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Prospective, Randomized Cross-over Study
Who cites it
309 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Evidence of Face Masks and Masking Policies for the Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and COVID-19 in Real-World Settings: A Systematic Literature Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Pooled it
- Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Effectiveness of public health measures in reducing the incidence of covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and covid-19 mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2021Pooled it
- The impact of briefly observing faces in opaque facial masks on emotion recognition and empathic concern.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2023Trial
- Impact of community masking on COVID-19: A cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2022Trial
- Effects of Using the Surgical Mask and FFP2 during the 6-Min Walking Test. A Randomized Controlled Trial.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Trial
- Article
- The lived experience of mask wearing among patients with chronic illnesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Promoting public health with blunt instruments: Evidence from vaccine mandates.Labour economics · 2025Article
- The effectiveness of the states' crisis response policies: Survival analysis on the COVID-19 transmission suppression in the United States.Health policy OPEN · 2025Article
- Article
- Measuring the fitted filtration efficiency of cloth masks, medical masks and respirators.PloS one · 2025Article
- Associations between local COVID-19 policies and anxiety in the USA: a longitudinal digital cohort study.BMJ public health · 2025Article
- Unraveling the impact of operational parameters and environmental conditions on the quality of viable bacterial aerosols.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Please wear a mask: a systematic case for mask wearing mandates.Journal of medical ethics · 2024Article
- Associations of U.S. state-level COVID-19 policies intensity with cannabis sharing behaviors in 2020.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Analysis of Surgical Masks Adverse Effects on Facial Skin in Long Term Usage During COVID-19 Pandemic.Turkish journal of pharmaceutical sciences · 2024Article
- Effects of Face Mask Mandates on COVID-19 Transmission in 51 Countries: Retrospective Event Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Article
249 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
State policies mandating public or community use of face masks or covers in mitigating the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are hotly contested. This study provides evidence from a natural experiment on the effects of state government mandates for face mask use in public issued by fifteen states plus Washington, D.C., between April 8 and May 15, 2020. The research design is an event study examining changes in the daily county-level COVID-19 growth rates between March 31 and May 22, 2020. Mandating face mask use in public is associated with a decline in the daily COVID-19 growth rate by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percentage points in 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, and 21 or more days after state face mask orders were signed, respectively. Estimates suggest that as a result of the implementation of these mandates, more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases were averted by May 22, 2020. The findings suggest that requiring face mask use in public could help in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.
Indexed as
Identifiers
32543923What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.