Face masks could be giving people Covid-19 immunity, researchers suggest.

Mask wearing might also be reducing the severity of the virus and ensuring that a greater proportion of new infections are asymptomatic. Face masks could also be making people less sick. 

Face masks may be inadvertently giving people Covid19 immunity and making them get less sick from the virus, academics have suggested in one of the most respected medical journals in the world. 

The commentary, published in the New England Journal of Medecine, advances the unproven but promising theory that universal mask wearing might be helping to reduce the severity of the virus and ensuring that a greater proportion of new infections are asymptomatic.

If this hypothesis is borne out, the academics argue, then universal mask-wearing could become a form of variolation (inoculation) that would generate immunity and "thereby slow the spread of the virus in the United States and elsewhere" as the world awaits a vaccine. 

It comes as increasing evidence suggests that the amount of virus someone is exposed to at the start of infection - the "infectious dose" - may determine the severity of their illness. 

Read more of the article written by Georgina Hayes published in the Telegraph newspaper here: 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/face-masks-could-giving-people-covid-19-immunity-researchers/