The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us all to stay locked indoors and only step out when absolutely necessary, armoured with a face mask, and in some cases gloves.?
Masks, no matter how annoying they feel, are now a part of our lives. However,? there are some who cannot wear face masks, due to issues with their nose or their respiratory system.?
Such people often wear face shields -- plastic visors that are strapped on the face -- which also tries to prevent the droplets from spreading. However, now a recent study in Japan has revealed that wearing only the face shield isn¡¯t as effective.
The study was conducted on Fugaku -- world¡¯s fastest supercomputer that can perform more than 415 quadrillion computations in a second. The 130 billion yen supercomputer has been in use for studying the movement of aerosol droplets since a while now. However now, they ran simulations on how they travel with a face shield.
For this study, they simulated airflow with the reproduction of tens of thousands of droplets of different sizes, ranging from below 1 micrometre to several hundred micrometres.
The supercomputer found that almost 100 percent of airborne droplets smaller than 5 micrometres in size managed to get out of the protective visor. Moreover, half of the larger droplets as large as 50 micrometres also managed to get out.
Lead researcher Makoto Tsubokura warned users to not wear only face shields, in a conversation with the Guardian, ¡°Judging from the results of the simulation, unfortunately, the effectiveness of face guards in preventing droplets from spreading from an infected person¡¯s mouth is limited compared with masks.¡± In other words masks are better than face shields when it comes to stopping aerosol droplets from spreading, according to the lead researcher of the study.?
He added, ¡°This is especially true for small droplets of less than 20 micrometres. At the same time, it somehow works for the droplets larger than 50 micrometres.¡±
He did, however, state that in case wearing shields is the only option that¡¯s available, make sure you only wear it in areas which are properly ventilated.?