What should I do with all these COVID masks now that masking mandates are being lifted?
As a health department official noted this week: “The pandemic’s not over” with this week’s statewide reopening.
State Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah this week amended the state mask order to note that those not fully vaccinated must continue to wear masks in public indoor settings, and all people, even those who are fully vaccinated, must still wear masks in certain places, including schools, health care settings and public transportation.
Except for those conditions, and for businesses that might still require them, and parents wearing them to protect their unvaccinated kids, it’s now pretty much a mask-free world for the fully vaccinated. (Those not vaccinated still need to keep masks on).
The state maintains that for fully vaccinated individuals, for now, you are OK to go without a mask, even with the Delta variant in our midst.
“At this point we are not currently considering a re-institution of the mask mandate,” said Dr. Scott Lindquist, the state’s acting health officer, during Wednesday’s COVID-19 briefing from the state Department of Health.
“Our Delta variant is not as aggressive, it’s not causing as many hospitalizations or deaths as would be predicted,” he said.
Other variants, such as the Gamma, remain a threat, but not yet to the level of revising the mask orders.
“We will be watching this very closely. We are just not there at this point,” Lindquist said.
There are still uses for your masks beyond COVID, along with ways to recycle them.
▪ Protection from wildfire smoke: Wildfires, and smoke, are inevitable, particularly with the Fourth of July and its fireworks coming so soon after the recent unprecedented heat wave, along with current smoke from British Columbia fires. N95 masks can filter out 95 percent of particles larger than 0.3 microns, making them effective against 2.5-micron particles in wildfire smoke, according to Dr. William Lang, the chief medical officer at WorldClinic and a former director of the White House Medical Unit in an interview with Healthline last year. KN95 also can be effective if you have to be outside in the smoke.
The CDC says, “Look for KN95 masks that meet requirements similar to those set by CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for respirators.”
▪ Protection against flu: You would think given that the flu basically vanished last year that it would be a given that masks eliminate flu. Surprisingly, the CDC still doesn’t offer a blanket recommendation that people wear masks in public settings to protect themselves from the flu. However, according to information from the Mayo Clinic, “wearing a mask might help protect you from the human influenza A and B viruses — the ones responsible for most seasonal outbreaks of the flu (influenza).”
According to the CDC: “Adults can shed influenza virus one day before symptoms appear and up to approximately 5 to 7 days after onset of illness; thus, the selective use of masks (in proximity to a known symptomatic person) may not effectively limit transmission in the community.”
It added: “No recommendation can be made at this time for mask use in the community by asymptomatic persons, including those at high risk for complications, to prevent exposure to influenza viruses.”
However, Michele Roberts, acting assistant secretary for the state Department of Health, during Wednesday’s DOH media briefing, said the past flu season may set the course for future ones regarding masks.
“We really didn’t have a flu season, and that’s a disease that usually kills hundreds of people across this country,” she said. “And that’s the power of both social distancing and the power of masks. So I think that will be something hopefully all of us will think about ... especially during the winter months of respiratory illness season.”
▪ Recycle: Programs have evolved to keep PPE from the landfill. TerraCycle, a private U.S. recycling company based in Trenton, New Jersey, offers two recycling programs for PPE masks with the purchase of recycling boxes to ship the items:
▪ Disposable Masks - Zero Waste Box, which will take 3-ply surgical, dust masks, KN95 and N95 masks.
▪ Safety Equipment and Protective Gear - Zero Waste Box, which takes more items such as beard nets, disposable (latex, nitrile, and vinyl) gloves, non-woven disposable masks, safety glasses, goggles and more.
Sue Kauffman, media representative for TerraCycle, told The News Tribune via email: “The boxes can be purchased in any size ranging from a small box to a pallet, depending on your need. When the box is full, you close it up and ship it back to TerraCycle where we will recycle the PPE into a material that can be used to create new products like plastic lumber and composite decking applications.”
More information can be found online about the process.
This story was originally published July 1, 2021 at 1:43 PM.
