Maintaining the wearing of the mask outdoors “may still make sense in large cities but not elsewhere”, thinks a doctor

Wednesday, May 19 marked the reopening of non-essential shops, which are still closed, and especially bars and restaurants, which are authorized to accommodate customers on terraces. Some mayors and even some prefects have also taken the opportunity to remove, at least partially, the obligation to wear a mask outdoors. This is the case of Ardèche, Lozère, Charente-Maritime or Arcachon, for example, where the mask is no longer compulsory except in certain very frequented places. In Hérault, you still have to wear a mask in urbanized areas. Other departments such as Seine-et-Marne, Creuse or Yonne had announced such measures before backpedaling.

It has been almost a year in some areas, such as Paris, that the mask is mandatory outdoors. While the health situation seems more favorable and in a general context of deconfinement, should we already give up this measure? 20 minutes asked the question to the doctor who is a member of the “On the side of science” collective, Michaël Rochoy.

Do these few waivers of the obligation to wear a mask outdoors come too soon?

Not necessarily, I think it depends on the regions: the incidence rates are not at all the same according to the cities or the departments. Anyway, it’s always a bit the same on the outdoor mask: it never had much interest. It is only useful in dense places. Putting the mask on the beach doesn’t make sense, when you’re in pedestrian streets with only a few people it doesn’t make sense either …

It makes sense when we are in a market, when we are all stuck tight for half an hour, in a flea market … It is interesting when we are long in a place, static, where there are people: typically the definition of terraces. Except in big cities, especially students, outdoors, we still manage not to step on each other. The question is not so much to lift this obligation as to know why it was introduced. I would better understand a prefect who says that the mask outside is not a good idea, but neither is the reopening of the terraces.

So, quite the opposite of what we are currently doing?

Currently we put the mask outside but we remove it when we are all glued to each other and sitting for an hour in the same place, with the wind which can send the droplets to the neighbor behind or in front. This is really all that should not be done. So of course these situations are not either a great risk in absolute terms or taken in isolation. That is to say that it is not because we have seen images with 100 or 200 people dancing that it will necessarily create a cluster.

For you, the question of wearing a mask outdoors is a purely political question?

Yes, it is more political than health. This decision never made any real health sense in most cities. In some large cities such as Paris, this made it possible at one point to avoid the effect of maps with areas without a mandatory mask and areas with a mandatory mask. It may still make sense in these big cities, like Lille or Rennes, to still maintain this measure, but not in most of the much smaller cities.

In your opinion, from what level of vaccination or contamination would it be “acceptable” to lift the obligation to wear a mask outdoors?

I think these would necessarily be artificial criteria. Currently I am in the street, in Outreau, a town of 15,000 inhabitants, and the first person is four meters from me. If in this very low risk context, I still have to wear a mask, then why have the terraces been reopened? You still have to show some logic. All this rests in fact on a question of coherence of the sanitary measures taken for months. The question of quantifying the objectives to lift this or that measure remains interesting: in truth this is what should be done, well beyond the question of masks outdoors. But the only figure that conditioned the reopening of shops and terraces, for example, is a date.