This is a big shift in the WHO’s guidance on when the public should cover their faces.
For months, the organisation’s experts stuck to the line that masks would encourage a false sense of security and would deprive medical professionals of badly needed protective equipment.
Those arguments have not gone away but at the same time, the WHO acknowledges that new evidence has emerged on the risks of transmission.
It points to recent research that people can be highly infectious in the few days before they show symptoms and that some people catch the virus but never show symptoms at all, as I reported last weekend.
So where distancing isn’t possible, such as on public transport and in locations as varied as shops and refugee camps, it’s suggested that faces are covered with homemade masks to avoid passing on the infection.
Over 60s with underlying health conditions should go further, the WHO said, and wear medical-grade masks to give themselves better protection.
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