Renuga Vivekanandan, MD
I'm going to demonstrate how to wear a mask appropriately. So I'm going to start off with hand sanitizing. And now I'm going to grab my mask.
I’m going to put my mask over. And going to punch just like that. And now I'm going to hand sanitize again since I touched my face to make sure I clean my hands. This is how I wear my mask and I also make sure that my nose and my mouth are well covered so my secretions are not exposing to others.
I'm going show you how to take off a mask properly. So first I'm going do hand sanitizing again, and I'm going use my fingers around my ear lobes to take off my mask. So that's how I would take off my mask.
If I want to reuse this mask and keep it in a safe area, I will have a paper towel that is clean, so I can lay it down and then I will do my hand sanitizer, and after I take a sip of drink, or I eat my food, I'll do hand sanitizing again, pick up the mask and put it back on. So it's really important when we wear a mask to cover our nose and our mouth. If the mask is not covering the nose--just the mouth--if you have infection you're still at risk of exposing others. So it's very important to cover your nose and your mouth so that you're not exposing others and you're containing your secretions in the mask.
If you wear a mask this way, this is not appropriate, because you're not containing your secretions from your nose. If you wear your mask this way, you're not containing your secretions because your mouth and your nose is open, so these are not appropriate ways to wear a mask. And if you decide to store your mask and you put it in your arm this way to hold it that is not appropriate because you contaminate the mask, you shouldn't be putting it back on your face.
It's really important to wear a mask because during the COVID pandemic infection there's symptomatic patients and asymptomatic carriers, so you might have the infection, but you might not know. So as we are seeing a lot of places opening up, and when Nebraska ready to open up and have more people interact with each other, it's going be really important to protect each other. If you're sick and if you wear a mask, you are containing that secretion that is coming from your nose or your mouth. So you're protecting others. There's a misconception that if you wear a mask you're protecting yourself, it's actually when you wear a mask, you're protecting others from you.
So for me, it's always now important it's not about me, it's about us in the community and how do we keep each other protected? So, if we wear a mask--all of us--and do good hand hygiene and social distancing, we will help each other and we could keep this infection under control.
