Americans should be wearing N95 masks for greater protection against the highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“If you’re going to consider wearing a mask, the quality of the masks does matter,” he said. “So if you can get your hands on a KN95 mask or an N95 mask, that’s going to afford you a lot more protection.”
Compared to more commonly worn surgical masks or cloth face coverings, when worn properly, N95s fit more closely to the face and provide at least 95 percent protection level against airborne viruses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In early 2020, at the start of the CCP virus pandemic, Americans were not advised to wear masks, which later led to confusion regarding mask policies.
Former White House deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Feb. 21 that U.S. officials had made the “grave misstep” of approaching the CCP virus as if it were a flu, which delayed the mask-wearing advice for Americans.
“Initially, at the outset of this epidemic, we were encouraging people not to use N95 masks because there weren’t enough of those masks for medical workers. Now, there’s plenty of masks,” explained Gottlieb on Sunday.
“There are plenty of N95 masks in the system. The Biden administration has done a good job ramping up supply,” he said.
“There’s also KN95 masks available,” he said of the China-made masks.“So I would encourage people to look at the quality of the mask and try to get their hands on a better quality of mask.”