The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh

• DOI: 10.60692/b6ctc-3z246
• Publication Date: 2022-01-14
• Authors: Jason Abaluck; Laura H. Kwong; Ashley Styczynski; Ashraful Haque; Md. Alamgir Kabir; Ellen Bates-Jefferys; Emily Crawford; Jade Benjamin-Chung; Shabib Raihan; Shadman Rahman; Salim Benhachmi; Neeti Zaman Bintee; Peter J. Winch; Maqsud Hossain; Hasan Mahmud Reza; Abdullah All Jaber; Shawkee Gulshan M...; Aura Rahman; Faika Laz Banti; Tahrima Saiha Huq; Stephen P. Luby; Ahmed Mushfiq Mob...
• Keywords: Male; Rural Population; FOS: Political science; Social Sciences; Cluster (spacecraft); Infectious disease (medical specialty); Social Distancing; 0302 clinical medicine; Seroepidemiologic Studies; Psychological intervention; Pathology; Cluster Analysis; Psychology; Disease; Political science; Research Articles; Psychiatry; Bangladesh; Airborne Transmission of Respiratory Viruses; Modeling the Dynamics of COVID-19 Pandemic; public health; Politics; Age Factors; Masks; Programming language; 3. Good health; FOS: Psychology; Economics, Econometrics and Finance; Environmental health; Randomized controlled trial; Modeling and Simulation; Physical Sciences; Medicine; Female; Public Health; Art; Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine; Economics and Econometrics; Physical Distancing; Population; FOS: Law; Health Promotion; Grassroots; Visual arts; 03 medical and health sciences; Sex Factors; Impacts of COVID-19 on Global Economy and Markets; Health Sciences; FOS: Mathematics; Humans; SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; Masking (illustration); Computer science; Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19); Communicable Disease Control; Surgery; Law; Mathematics

Persuading people to mask Even in places where it is obligatory, people tend to optimistically overstate their compliance for mask wearing. How then can we persuade more of the population at large to act for the greater good? Abaluck et al . undertook a large, cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh involving hundreds of thousands of people (although mostly men) over a 2-month period. Colored masks of various construction were handed out free of charge, accompanied by a range of mask-wearing promotional activities inspired by marketing research. Using a grassroots network of volunteers to help conduct the study and gather data, the authors discovered that mask wearing averaged 13.3% in villages where no interventions took place but increased to 42.3% in villages where in-person interventions were introduced. Villages where in-person reinforcement of mask wearing occurred also showed a reduction in reporting COVID-like illness, particularly in high-risk individuals. —CA