The government is asking the French to stop using certain fabric masks including homemade ones.

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The government is asking the French to stop using certain fabric masks, including homemade ones, considered insufficiently filtering in the face of the appearance of new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus, said the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, Thursday on TF1.

"The HCSP (High Council of Public Health) recommends to the French, and this is the recommendation that I also make them, to no longer use the homemade mask that we made at home," said Olivier Véran, who asks also avoid the least filtering industrial fabric masks (called “category 2”).

The decree in which these provisions appear, as well as the opinion of the HCSP on which it is based, must be published Friday morning, said the Ministry of Health.

From now on, only three types of masks will therefore in principle have to be worn in public spaces against Covid-19, even if it will be difficult to ensure in practice that this instruction is respected: surgical masks (from the medical world , with a blue face and a white face), FFP2 (the most protective) and industrial fabric masks known as “category 1”.

For better collective protection against variants

Category 1 (or UNS1, for "non-sanitary use 1") fabric masks filter 90% of particles, compared to 70% for category 2 (UNS2), according to standards developed by Afnor.

Surgical masks, on the other hand, filter at least 95% of 3 micron particles.

Finally, FFP2 block 94% of aerosols, the finest particles (around 0.6 micrometers).

The health authorities want to encourage the French to wear the most filtering masks because of the appearance of new variants more contagious than the classic coronavirus, detected first in England or South Africa.

These variants are transmitted in the same way: increasing the level of filtration of masks is not therefore intended to ensure better individual protection, but rather to increase collective protection, by ensuring that as many people as possible wear a sufficiently filtering mask.

"The standard from now on"

"We are asking that this be the norm from now on", we told the Prime Minister's office, adding that it was a question of "passing this message very clearly to the French".

In fact, it is above all a strong incentive since the measure is difficult to impose in practice.

"I do not think that the police will ask each person the level of protection of their mask", we added to Matignon.

Another obstacle, the category of industrial fabric masks does not appear most of the time on the mask itself, but on the packaging or instructions.

Two meters away

In addition, the government will also modify the necessary safety distance below which one is considered a contact case when one is not wearing a mask.

While this distance was so far one meter, it is now two meters.

This was again a recommendation from the HCSP in the face of the arrival of new variants.

"It will have consequences in the way in which the Health Insurance makes contact tracing to identify contact cases", with isolation measures to the key, we commented to the Ministry of Health.

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