ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Mask wearing in community settings reduces SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Data-driven strategies for model-informed decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2026Pooled 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
- Analysis of an SIR model: preventive measures, bounded multiplicative random perturbations and optimal control strategies.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Heterogeneous impact of mask mandates on U.S. masking behavior: an interrupted time series study.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Health inequalities in risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection in England's second wave: population-based cross-sectional analysis from the REACT-1 study.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- Risks and benefits of face masks in children.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2026Review
- Article
- Protocol: a systematic review+ (SR+) to combine associative and mechanistic evidence on the efficacy of face masks in reducing transmission of respiratory diseases.Systematic reviews · 2025Article
- Measuring the fitted filtration efficiency of cloth masks, medical masks and respirators.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Factors influencing mask-wearing behavior in the context of COVID-19 severity risks in the post-COVID-19 era: a Japanese Nationwide Epidemiological Survey in 2023.Environmental health and preventive medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Role of Gut Microbiota in Long COVID: Impact on Immune Function and Organ System Health.Archives of microbiology & immunology · 2025Article
- Results of the Cologne Corona Surveillance (CoCoS) project - a cross-sectional study: Survey data on nonadherence to recommended individual behaviours for SARS-CoV-2 pandemic containment.German medical science : GMS e-journal · 2025Article
- Reevaluating Mask Effectiveness: Insights From Evidence-Based Medicine and Clinical Trials.Cureus · 2024Review
- Epidemiological impact of revoking mask-wearing recommendation on COVID-19 transmission in Tokyo, Japan.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2024Article
- The Effectiveness of Face Mask Mandates on COVID-19 Transmission in Utah.Public health reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974) · 2024Article
- Adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions following COVID-19 vaccination: a federated cohort study.NPJ digital medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The effectiveness of mask wearing at controlling severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission has been unclear. While masks are known to substantially reduce disease transmission in healthcare settings [D. K. Chu et al., Lancet 395, 1973–1987 (2020); J. Howard et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2014564118 (2021); Y. Cheng et al., Science eabg6296 (2021)], studies in community settings report inconsistent results [H. M. Ollila et al., medRxiv (2020); J. Brainard et al., Eurosurveillance 25, 2000725 (2020); T. Jefferson et al., Cochrane Database Syst. Rev. 11, CD006207 (2020)]. Most such studies focus on how masks impact transmission, by analyzing how effective government mask mandates are. However, we find that widespread voluntary mask wearing, and other data limitations, make mandate effectiveness a poor proxy for mask-wearing effectiveness. We directly analyze the effect of mask wearing on SARS-CoV-2 transmission, drawing on several datasets covering 92 regions on six continents, including the largest survey of wearing behavior (n= 20 million) [F. Kreuter et al., https://gisumd.github.io/COVID-19-API-Documentation (2020)]. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model, we estimate the effect of mask wearing on transmission, by linking reported wearing levels to reported cases in each region, while adjusting for mobility and nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as bans on large gatherings. Our estimates imply that the mean observed level of mask wearing corresponds to a 19% decrease in the reproduction number R. We also assess the robustness of our results in 60 tests spanning 20 sensitivity analyses. In light of these results, policy makers can effectively reduce transmission by intervening to increase mask wearing.
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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.