Personal care -> Health care -> SARS -> Wearing masks

Wearing masks

There are certain health advice that i would sincerely urge you to comply with. The advice from the Department of Health is practically NOT STRINGENT enough. Given the fact that the virus is HIGHLY contagious and can cause death in at least 5% of people, I sincerely urge everyone to WEAR A MASK (surgical mask or N95) whenever you leave your home, especially in MTR/train/transportation, and most importantly when travelling abroad and cross the border.

Once you are wearing the mask, you must not poke into your nose, mouth or eyes with your hands and fingers. because the droplets on the mask will then be brought to your eyes and nose etc which can then infect you.

when you reach home and you want to remove the mask, put it in a paper bag and hang the bag in the shelf or some where so that the mask will not touch other objects in your environment, but can be allowed to be reused since it is thought that the virus will die by 6 hours. (this is a thought but not a fact) so unless you have a good supply of mask that you can change daily, what you can do is to change the mask when it is damaged, you feel breathless when breathing through it.

Properly dispose the mask.

Source: The above is extract from a letter from Emily Hung Chi Wan 0710 a doctor in the Prince of Wales Hospital, working in the Department of Paediatics