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Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland

Non-pharmaceutical interventions have played a key role in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is challenging to estimate their impacts on disease spread and outcomes. On the island of Ireland, population mobility restrictions were imposed during the first wave, but mask-wearing was not mandated...

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Autores principales: Fitz-Simon, Nicola, Ferguson, John, Alvarez-Iglesias, Alberto, Sofonea, Mircea T., Kamiya, Tsukushi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10354478/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37476519
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.221540
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author Fitz-Simon, Nicola
Ferguson, John
Alvarez-Iglesias, Alberto
Sofonea, Mircea T.
Kamiya, Tsukushi
author_facet Fitz-Simon, Nicola
Ferguson, John
Alvarez-Iglesias, Alberto
Sofonea, Mircea T.
Kamiya, Tsukushi
author_sort Fitz-Simon, Nicola
collection PubMed
description Non-pharmaceutical interventions have played a key role in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is challenging to estimate their impacts on disease spread and outcomes. On the island of Ireland, population mobility restrictions were imposed during the first wave, but mask-wearing was not mandated until about six months into the pandemic. We use data on mask-wearing, mobility, and season, over the first year of the pandemic to predict independently the weekly infectious contact estimated by an epidemiological model. Using our models, we make counterfactual predictions of infectious contact, and ensuing hospitalizations, under a hypothetical intervention where 90% of the population wore masks from the beginning of community spread until the dates of the mask mandates. Over periods including the first wave of the pandemic, there were 1601 hospitalizations with COVID-19 in Northern Ireland and 1521 in the Republic of Ireland. Under the counterfactual mask-wearing scenario, we estimate 512 (95% CI 400, 730) and 344 (95% CI 266, 526) hospitalizations in the respective jurisdictions during the same periods. This could be partly due to other factors that were also changing over time.
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spelling pubmed-103544782023-07-20 Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland Fitz-Simon, Nicola Ferguson, John Alvarez-Iglesias, Alberto Sofonea, Mircea T. Kamiya, Tsukushi R Soc Open Sci Mathematics Non-pharmaceutical interventions have played a key role in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is challenging to estimate their impacts on disease spread and outcomes. On the island of Ireland, population mobility restrictions were imposed during the first wave, but mask-wearing was not mandated until about six months into the pandemic. We use data on mask-wearing, mobility, and season, over the first year of the pandemic to predict independently the weekly infectious contact estimated by an epidemiological model. Using our models, we make counterfactual predictions of infectious contact, and ensuing hospitalizations, under a hypothetical intervention where 90% of the population wore masks from the beginning of community spread until the dates of the mask mandates. Over periods including the first wave of the pandemic, there were 1601 hospitalizations with COVID-19 in Northern Ireland and 1521 in the Republic of Ireland. Under the counterfactual mask-wearing scenario, we estimate 512 (95% CI 400, 730) and 344 (95% CI 266, 526) hospitalizations in the respective jurisdictions during the same periods. This could be partly due to other factors that were also changing over time. The Royal Society 2023-07-19 /pmc/articles/PMC10354478/ /pubmed/37476519 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.221540 Text en © 2023 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Mathematics
Fitz-Simon, Nicola
Ferguson, John
Alvarez-Iglesias, Alberto
Sofonea, Mircea T.
Kamiya, Tsukushi
Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland
title Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland
title_full Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland
title_fullStr Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland
title_full_unstemmed Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland
title_short Understanding the role of mask-wearing during COVID-19 on the island of Ireland
title_sort understanding the role of mask-wearing during covid-19 on the island of ireland
topic Mathematics
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10354478/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37476519
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.221540
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