Face shields don’t give high level COVID protection, study shows

If you wore a face shield during the pandemic, it probably didn’t give you a high level of protection against Covid, according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

A study published today compared 13 styles of face shield in controlled laboratory settings.

While all the face shields provided some protection, none gave high levels of protection against external droplets.

As well as studying face shields in the lab, the research team surveyed people including health workers in middle income countries (Brazil and Nigeria) about their views on face shields as PPE.

Prof Paul Hunter, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Face shields have been popular because they don’t hinder breathing, they allow more natural communication than face masks and they provide splash protection.

“They were widely used through the Covid pandemic. But until now there hasn’t been a great deal of evidence about how protective they really are — particularly taking into account how people use them in the real world, and especially in poorer parts of the world.

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