Study Reveals That Wearing Only Face Shield Can’t Protect People From COVID-19

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are encouraged to stay indoors and only go out when it is necessary. Experts advised people to put on their face masks and even gloves.

No matter how annoying wearing a face mask can feel, it has now become a part of our lives. But for some people, because of their respiratory system or their nose, they can’t wear face masks.

So they have to resort to using face shields which are basically plastic visors strapped on the face to protect wearers from the droplets. But now, a recent study has suggested that wearing on face shields can’t protect people from COVID-19.

The study was carried out on Fugaku, the fastest supercomputer in the world. It only takes a second to perform over 415 quadrillion computations. The supercomputer has been used to study the aerosol droplets’ movement for a while now. It was then used to simulate how these droplets travel with a face shield.

The simulation includes the reproduction of tens of thousands of droplets in different sizes, from under 1 micrometer to several hundred micrometers.

It was discovered that almost 100% of airborne droplets with a size smaller than 5 micrometers and 50% of droplets as large as 50 micrometers still managed to get out of the face shield.

Makoto Tsubokura, the lead researcher, warned users to wear a face mask as well, instead of just wearing face shields. Masks are more effective in terms of stopping aerosol droplets.

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