FFP2 masks are in healthy supply, and as the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreads across the world, updating guidance to recommend their wider use could be one way to help reduce transmission
IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE few people now wear cloth masks as protection against covid-19. Instead, they don surgical or, increasingly, FFP2 masks, a highly efficient medical grade. Meanwhile, in Britain and America, FFP2 coverings are less common. What are these masks, and why are they not more widely used?A daily newsletter with the best of our journalismFFP stands for “filtering face piece”. It is a European standard for mask efficiency, ranging from one, the lowest grade, to three, the highest.
At the start of the pandemic, FFP2 masks were scarce and costly. Even governments fell victim to price gouging, paying more than €4 per mask. Demand had previously been low, so stockpiles and production capacity could not satisfy the sudden surge. Governments wanted to reserve supplies for those most at risk of contracting the virus, such as health-care workers. But production quickly expanded: China went from making 20m of the masks a day in January 2020 to almost 200m a day in March 2020.
In Britain and America officials say health-care workers should have prioritised access to FFP2 masks. .
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