Waiting for a safe and effective vaccine, the mask could become a rudimentary `` vaccine '' against the coronavirus because, by shielding the entry of the virus in large quantities, it could however allow a few viral particles to pass and penetrate in the airways of the wearer, thus activating an immunization process against SARS-CoV-2, even with an infection without symptoms.
This is the theory illustrated in the New England Journal of Medicine by Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco.
"You can have the virus but be asymptomatic, so with masks - Gandhi says - you can increase the rate of asymptomatic infections, and maybe this could become a way to safely inoculate the virus in the population". But it will be difficult to test the effectiveness of this hypothetical method that refers to the now obsolete practice of smallpox (a technique against smallpox which consisted in inoculating pus from a patient), or inoculating small doses of a virus to trigger a reaction. 'safe' immune system. For now, some animal studies have shown that inoculating small doses of the coronavirus causes mild, non-serious disease, Gandhi explains, and some epidemiological evidence (for example in outbreaks created on cruise ships or in other crowded places but where everyone wore masks) show that the use of the mask in the presence of subjects positive for the virus can favor predominantly asymptomatic outbreaks. But this does not give certainty that asymptomatic infection is accompanied by the development of immunity and therefore it is not a strong enough data to confirm this rudimentary immunization practice.