1. Wear your mask
Wearing a mask that covers your mouth and nose can prevent those who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others. Recent evidence suggests that masks may even benefit the wearer, offering some level of protection against infections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that everyone age 2 years and older wear masks in public settings and around people who don’t live in the same household—when you can’t stay 6 feet apart from others.
Masks should be made of two or more layers of washable, breathable fabric and fit snugly on your face. “A quick and easy test is to hold your mask up to the light. If light passes through, it’s too thin,” Dr. Meyer says. “Masks only work when they cover the nose and mouth because that is where infected droplets are expelled and because the virus infects people through the mucous membranes in their nose and throat.”
2. Stay socially distant
COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are within 6 feet of one another (about two arms’ length) for a prolonged period (at least 15 minutes). Virus transmission can occur when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks, which releases droplets from the mouth or nose into the air.
People can be asymptomatic and spread the virus without knowing that they are sick, which makes it especially important to remain 6 feet away from others, whether you are inside or outside. Plus, the more people you interact with at a gathering and the longer time you spend interacting with each, the higher your risk of becoming infected with the virus by someone who has it.
If you are attending an event or gathering of some kind, it’s also important to be aware of the level of community transmission. One method of estimating how high the risk may be is referred to as R0.
“Pronounced ‘R naught,’ and also known as the reproduction number, this is a measure of how fast a disease is spreading,” explains Onyema Ogbuagu, MBBCh, a Yale Medicine infectious disease expert. “If the reproduction number is 5.0, that means one infected person will spread the virus to an average of five people. Therefore, the lower the rate, the safer it is.”
The R0 for COVID-19 is believed to be in the range of 1.4 to 2.9. For comparison, measles, which has the highest reproduction number known among humans, ranges from 12 to 18. Seasonal influenza is around 0.9 and 2.1.
While R0 refers to the basic, or initial, reproduction number, there is another measurement called Rt, which is the current reproduction number and is the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. If Rt is above 1.0, it spreads quickly. If it’s below 1.0, it will eventually stop spreading.