Korona - Ansiktsmasker av tekstil godkjennes ikke hos mange europeiske selskaper - Curt Lewis

 

Major Airlines Are Now Banning This One Type of Mask

 

YOU MAY NOT BE ALLOWED ON YOUR NEXT FLIGHT

 

As a number of COVID restrictions have come and gone and come back again, one has remained consistent: You must wear a mask on airplanes. This requirement was instituted by many airlines early in the pandemic to keep air travel safe, and government agencies around the world have doubled down on this with their own mandates. Airlines have issued fines, pulled passengers from planes, and even canceled entire flights as a result of people flouting mask rules over the last year. Now, some companies are taking their mandates even further by banning one type of mask altogether. Read on to find out what face covering could keep you from being allowed on future flights.

 

Some major airlines have banned cloth masks on planes.

 

Cloth masks have been widely used by people around the world since the beginning of the pandemic, becoming particularly popular when medical masks were in short supply for frontline workers. But this type of face covering may no longer cut it in certain situations. According to Travel + Leisure, many major international airlines now ban masks made from cloth fabric, including Finnair, Air France, Lufthansa, Swissair, Croatia Airlines, and LATAM Airlines. These airlines are only allowing other, more effective masks, such as N95 masks, KN95 masks, surgical masks, and respirators without exhaust valves.

 

Airlines say that cloth masks are not sufficiently protective.

 

Finnair is the most recent airline to have banned cloth masks on Aug. 13, stating that the face covering is not protective enough. "The safety of our customers and employees is our first priority. Fabric masks are slightly less efficient at protecting people from infection than surgical masks," Finnair said in a statement.

 

A recent study being peer reviewed for publication in the journal Science and pre-printed early on Aug. 13 backs this up. Researchers for this study analyzed more than 340,000 adults from 600 villages in rural Bangladesh, finding that cloth masks did not perform in the same way as surgical masks. The study authors said that while they found "clear evidence" that surgical masks are effective at reducing symptomatic COVID, they could not say the same for cloth masks. According to the study, surgical masks had a filtration efficiency of 95 percent, while cloth coverings were only 37 percent effective.

 

"While cloth masks clearly reduce symptoms, we cannot reject that they have zero or only a small impact on symptomatic COVID infections," the authors wrote. "Surgical masks have higher filtration efficiency, are cheaper, are consistently worn, and are better supported by our evidence as tools to reduce COVID-19."