"Under these conditions, if even the largest theoretical risk is small, then you're on the very safe side under real conditions." For the comparative value without the protection of a mask, however, the safety buffer turns out to be much smaller. But we assumed this because we can't measure for all situations how much breathing air from one mask wearer reaches another person, and because we wanted to calculate the risk as conservatively as possible," Bodenschatz explains.
This is because the air that flows out of the mask at the edges is diluted, so you don't get all the unfiltered breathing air. "In daily life, the actual probability of infection is certainly 10 to 100 times smaller," says Eberhard Bodenschatz. The infection probabilities determined by the Max Planck team indicate the upper limit of the risk in each case. © Birte Thiede/MPI für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation The study also confirms the intuitive assumption that for effective protection against infection, in particular the infected person should wear a mask that filters as well as possible and fits tightly to the face. If both wear well-fitting medical masks, the virus is likely to be transmitted within 20 minutes with a maximum probability of ten percent. If their masks fit poorly, the probability of infection increases to about four percent. If both the infected and the non-infected person wear well-fitting FFP2 masks, the maximum risk of infection after 20 minutes is hardly more than one per thousand, even at the shortest distance. The Göttingen study confirms that FFP2 or KN95 masks are particularly effective in filtering infectious particles from the air breathed - especially if they are as tightly sealed as possible at the face. Well-fitting FFP2 masks reduce the risk at least into the per thousand range.Īs high as the risk of infection is without mouth-nose protection, medical or FFP2 masks protect effectively. And such encounters are unavoidable in schools, restaurants, clubs or even outdoors. "In our study we found that the risk of infection without wearing masks is enormously high after only a few minutes, even at a distance of three metres, if the infected persons have the high viral load of the delta variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus," says Eberhard Bodenschatz. In addition, the particularly large and thus virus-rich particles fall to the ground after only a short distance through the air. At this distance, the breathing air has already spread in a cone shape in the air the infectious particles are correspondingly diluted. "We would not have thought that at a distance of several metres it would take so little time for the infectious dose to be absorbed from the breath of a virus carrier," says Eberhard Bodenschatz, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation. The Göttingen team was surprised at how great the risk of infection with the coronavirus is.
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