Dr. Stanley Martin (Photo provided)
LISTEN to Dr. Stanley Martin’s Interview HERE
SUNBURY — Wearing a cloth mask is the most important thing the public can do to prevent the spread of infection, so said Geisinger Director of Infectious Diseases, Dr. Stanley Martin, on WKOK Sunrise recently.
He tells WKOK that while there are many things you can do to decrease the risk of spread of this infection, such as hand hygiene, disinfection of surrounding environment, and social distancing, studies have been coming out in recent months which show that wearing a mask in a community setting has the biggest impact. He tells WKOK that there’s no health risk in wearing a mask.
Dr. Martin acknowledged that there are some individuals who cannot wear masks for certain medical reasons, “I know a lot of people feel uncomfortable with them, and there are some people who can’t wear them for medical reasons, these are people usually because of various neurological or psychiatric conditions more than anything.”
He says that masks protect both the wearer and others, “Wearing a mask is a way of protecting other people in a very big and important way. But, of course, it also protects you. By you wearing the mask, you are decreasing your risk of getting the infection.”
With the question of schools reopening, Dr. Martin says that keeping children and the community safe at the same time is a very challenging and daunting task. The state put out some guidance measures to help schools with this last week.
“A lot of the things that can help with schools as they look to try to reopen are going to be spacing out in the classroom, cohorting students, having only so many students in a classroom or in the school at a certain time, doing special disinfecting measures, and yes, most definitely wearing a mask while at school. The exclusions are going to be children less than two years old,” he said.
Dr. Martin says that it is possible we could be facing another surge in infections at some point, and that it’s possible that the counties could go back to yellow or red if we’re not thoughtful about our own behavior. He says we can have an open state, and we can take care of ourselves and part of hat is wearing a mask. You can hear all of his remarks on the WKOK Podcast page.
