(CNN) — While the World Health Organization has not changed its position on whether the general public should wear face masks during the coronavirus pandemic, it will support individual countries in making their own national recommendations around mask wearing.
“We can certainly see circumstances in which the use of masks — both homemade and cloth masks — at the community level may help in an overall comprehensive response to this disease, and we will support governments in making those decisions based on the situation they find themselves in in terms of transmission,” Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO executive director of health emergencies programme, said during a media briefing in Geneva on Friday.
Ryan said that wearing a mask in public doesn’t necessarily protect the person wearing it, but rather helps to limit that person’s likelihood of infecting others if that person is sick.
