As we wade through this second wave of COVID-19 cases, I still find it curious how some Burnaby grocery stores make wearing a mask mandatory while others don’t.
T&T led the way by making masks mandatory back in the spring, followed later in the summer by Whole Foods, Real Canadian Superstore and Walmart in Burnaby.
Based on my experience and a view of corporate websites, I haven’t seen mask mandates for Sobeys, Nesters, Save-on Foods and others in Burnaby. (If they do have mask mandates that they haven’t posted publicly, then they aren’t enforcing them.)
Now comes new research from Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University that shows the power of mask mandates.
The new study by SFU researchers says they “found clear evidence that wearing a mask can have a significant impact on the spread of COVID-19.”
The researchers, from SFU’s Department of Economics, have also determined that “mask mandates are associated with a 25 per cent or larger weekly reduction in COVID-19 cases,” said a news release. “The finding of their study, still in preprint and not yet peer-reviewed, conclude that mandating indoor masks nationwide in early July could have reduced the weekly number of new cases in Canada by 25 to 40 per cent in mid-August, which translates into 700 to 1,100 fewer cases per week.”
That, of course, suggests the B.C. government should have taken more action on this, but for the purpose of this blog, I’m only looking at how businesses should react to it.
If government isn’t going to mandate indoor masks, hopefully more businesses will at least do this to help stop the spread.
The study analyzed the impact of mask mandates that were implemented across Ontario’s 34 Public Health Units (PHUs) over the course of two months.
Researchers compared the results of PHUs that adopted mask mandates earlier to those that adopted mandates later. They determined that, in the first few weeks after their introduction, mask mandates were associated with an average weekly reduction of 25 to 31 per cent in newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases, relative to the trend in mask mandate absence, in July and August.
“A further Canada-wide analysis with province-level data found a significantly negative association between mask mandates and subsequent COVID-19 case growth – up to a 46 per cent average reduction in weekly cases in the first several weeks after adoption,” said the news release.
That seems good, doesn’t it?
“These results were supported by additional survey data that showed mask mandates increase self-reported mask usage in Canada by 30 percentage points, suggesting that the policy has a significant impact on behaviour,” said SFU. “Jointly, these results suggest that mandating indoor mask wear in public places is a powerful policy measure to slow the spread of COVID-19, with little associated economic disruption in the short term.”
No study is foolproof, of course, and anti-maskers will cry about how it’s “not proven,” but these scientists seem pretty convinced.
The study authors did note that while the results are “significant,” the sample period “does not allow them to definitively say whether the effect of mask mandates persists or weakens beyond the first few weeks after implementation. However, they conclude that, combined with other policy measures, mask mandates can be a potent policy tool for slowing the spread of COVID-19.”
Wearing a mask is such a simple thing for most people to do. I’m not saying it’s easy, however. I detest wearing a mask for an extended period of time – quick grocery store trips, however, are relatively easy - but I also recognize that it will help protect me and protect others so I do it.
Nobody said fighting a pandemic would be easy. Hopefully more stores jump on the mask mandate train. I don’t know about other customers, but it definitely affects my shopping habits that some stores are taking that extra step.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
