Masks, hand sanitiser cut down flu spread

Face masks and regular use of alcohol-based hand sanitiser cut down the risk of getting flu-like illness.

During the current H1N1 epidemic, vaccines were slow to arrive and use of antiviral drugs was limited. To investigate what measures might be most effective in preventing spread of the flu, researchers from Michigan divided 1,437 college students into three groups; the first group was  made to wear  face masks and use hand-sanitizers, the second group used only face masks and the third group served as the “control” group. The reserachers studied the participants for six weeks but continued to enroll the participants for the first two weeks.

During the initial fortnight , there was no difference in the incidence of flu-like illness among the three groups;  likely as  the flu season was just beginning. But in  the last couple of weeks, it was found that college students who wore the face masks for a few hours a day and used alcohol-based hand sanitiser regularly cut their risk of coming down with flu-like illness. Students using face masks and hand sanitiser were 35 percent to 51 percent less likely to develop flu-like illness than students in the control group. While the face mask-only group were also less likely to catch flu-like illness than the control group, the difference wasn't statistically significant.

The researchers concluded that non-drug interventions like hand hygiene and face masks are likely to be important in fighting any flu pandemic.