As Wang's study revealed, rates of infection differed between doctors and nurses with [N95] respirators and those without.
Specifically, the authors examined data collected from Jan. 2-22 at six departments within the Zhongnan Hospital. Within the 10-day period, the hospital treated 28 individuals with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 58 "suspicious" cases. The medical staff in each department followed different safety protocols when treating the patients.
About 280 medical staff in the hospital's Respiratory, ICU and Infectious Diseases departments wore N95 respirators and washed their hands frequently, while about 215 in the departments of Hepatobiliary Pancreatic Surgery, Trauma and Microsurgery, and Urology wore no masks and disinfected their hands less frequently. Although the respirator group encountered confirmed cases more often than the unmasked group — more than 730% more often — no one in the respirator group became infected.
In comparison, 10 people in the unmasked group contracted the novel disease, despite treating fewer infected patients.
"It would appear that N95 respirators, no surprise, protect against health care acquisition of the virus," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, who was not involved in the current study. The small study is "reassuring in that sense," although there was no reason to think that N95 respirators wouldn't block out the novel coronavirus effectively, he added.