The Academy of Medicine believes that the general wearing of masks would be a useful complement to the barrier measures in force.
- The Academy of Medicine recommends wearing a generalized and compulsory mask
- The shortage of masks in France is at the origin of a controversy between caregivers and political leaders
While France is already struggling to provide masks to all caregivers who are on the front line in the Covid-19 epidemic, the Academy of Medicine throws a stone into the water by recommending the “generalized wearing” of this protection, whatever its model, surgical, FFP2 or… artisanal.
“People in the incubation period or who are asymptomatic have been shown to excrete the virus and maintain the transmission of infection”underlines the Academy in a press release taken up on Friday April 3 afternoon by Le Figaro. She specifies that the widespread wearing of masks would be “a logical addition to the barrier measures” which have been taken to curb the development of the epidemic and wishes that this wearing of the mask be returned “mandatory for outings necessary during confinement”.
A shortage that caused a controversy
The Academy of Medicine even suggests, faced with the shortage of masks, to go to tutorials allowing everyone to make fabric protection. In his televised intervention on Thursday April 2, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe returned to this shortage which generated controversy after the scandalized remarks of many caregivers who were unable to obtain this protective equipment. “We have placed the orders, now we have to get the deliveries (…). We sometimes run into difficulties”he acknowledged, recalling France’s desire to produce its own masks in the future.
The position of the Academy of Medicine could well revive this controversy on the difficulty of finding these protections in France. Especially since it makes the generalized and compulsory wearing of the mask a condition, according to it, prior to deconfinement “and until the control of the circulation of the virus attested by the absence of declared cases for 14 days.
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