Description

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, a major public health goal has been reducing the spread of the virus, with particular emphasis on reducing transmission from person to person. Frequent face touching can transmit viral particles from one infected person and subsequently infect others in a public area. This raises an important concern about the use of face masks and their relationship with face touching behaviors. One concern discussed during the pandemic is that wearing a mask could increase face touching because it is required to remove the mask to smoke, drink, eat, etc. The purpose of this study was to assess if mask wearing was associated with increased facial touching.Public webcam videos from four different cities in New York, New Jersey, Louisiana and Florida were used to collect data. We selected 490 individuals from August to November 2020 who met the study criteria. Facial touches were recorded as pedestrians passed under the webcam. Adult pedestrians wearing masks were compared to those not wearing masks. Quantitative measures of frequency, duration, site of touch and oral activities were recorded. Linear regression analysis was used to assess the association between mask use and face touching. Of the observed 490 subjects, 241 were wearing a mask and 249 were not. In the mask wearing group, 49.1% were wearing it properly and 33.7% wearing it improperly, covering the mouth only. Of those who touched their face, 61.1% of people were not wearing a mask. The most common site of facial touching was the perioral region in both groups. Both the masked and unmasked group had a frequency of face touching for 0.03 touches/second. Oral activities such as eating or smoking, increased facial touching in the unmasked group. Contrary to expectations, non-mask wearing subjects touched their face more frequently than those who were wearing a mask. This is significant because those wearing a face mask were not associated with more face touching and are thus less likely to be spreading and ingesting viral particles.