PRAGUE According to a US study of more than 25,000 people, drapes reduce the risk of covid-19 infection to 34 percent. Its results were cited at a seminar on a new type of coronavirus in the Chamber of Deputies by virologist Ivan Hirsch from the Faculty of Science at Charles University.
Most Czechs could put up their veils in public transport or shops on Wednesdays, they remain mandatory in medical facilities, at larger events inside buildings or in the Prague metro. Stricter rules continue to apply to Frýdek-Místek and Karviná.
Due to the warm weather, the Czechs began to take off their veils in public. It’s risky behavior, says Prymula |
“The study from the USA took advantage of the fact that they did nothing there first, then introduced social distance and then somewhere veils,” Hirsch explained. According to him, the infection in the states continued even after the introduction of social distance, after the introduction of quarantine it stopped, but it does not decrease. “In New York, drapes became infected and the disease began to decline,” he added.
According to him, keeping distances between people or washing hands does not prevent air transmission, which is considered the main, while veils do. Droplets exhaled by the infected spread at a rate of about one meter per second, about the size of about one tenth of a human hair. They stay in the air for quite a long time, dropping only about a millimeter per second. “But we do not know how much virus is in one droplet and how it settles in the lungs,” he said.
The Czechia soon introduced the wearing of veils against other countries. Some approach it only as part of the relaxation of the adopted measures. “We approached it radically, but in the beginning there was more intuition,” he added. At the end of March, the World Health Organization (WHO) was also against wearing veils. However, the purpose was mainly to prevent their shortage for health professionals, and later, as a result of the situation, reconsidered its position.
In Prague, veils will remain mandatory in the metro and at large events. In the Karviná region, the regime will tighten |
From the beginning, doctors warn that infection with coronavirus may not completely prevent such protection, and respirators are needed to filter the inhaled air. Veils, on the other hand, prevent the virus from exhaling into the environment. That is why at a time when social networks also lived by sewing veils, the motto promoting their wearing was adopted “My veil protects you, your veil protects me.”
According to the epidemiologist Rastislav Maďar, who leads the working group of the Ministry of Health for the release of quarantine measures, drapes are a key component of the recommendations for regional hygienic stations in case of deterioration of the epidemiological situation in the region.
“If the situation worsens, it will go in the opposite direction than the measures were relaxed,” he told a Ministry of Health press conference on Monday. The first step is the return of the veils, then the regulation of spacing and limiting the capacity of mass events. At high degrees of risk, local movement restrictions could follow.
–
