To mask or not to mask: Modeling the potential for face mask use by the general public to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic

Steffen E. Eikenberry; Marina Mancuso; Enahoro Iboi; Tin Phan; Keenan Eikenberry; Yang Kuang; Eric Kostelich; Abba B. Gumel

The relationship between mask coverage, efficacy, and metrics of epidemic severity considered above are highly nonlinear. The relationship between β 0 (the infectious contact rate) and such metrics is similarly nonlinear. However, incremental reductions in β 0 , due to social distances measures, etc., can ultimately synergize with other reductions to yield a meaningfully effect on the epidemic. Therefore, we numerically determine what the equivalent change in β 0 under the baseline would have been under mask use at different coverage/efficacy levels, and we denote the equivalent β 0 value asβ 0 .