A mathematical reason to wear a face mask during a COVID-19 like pandemic

MKD Publishing House 2023-07-01

The new coronavirus called COVID-19 started spreading in China since the end of 2019, and shortly, it became a serious matter over the entire world, infecting millions of people and killing many of them. That virus lead researchers to looking for ways to eradicate it, the first thing being to prevent people from getting contaminated. One way someone can protect himself and others is to wear a face mask as recommended by the World Health Organization. In this paper, we give a simple mathematical model showing why everyone should wear a face mask during a COVID-19 like pandemic. In order to illustrate the situation, we carry out a short simulation work, showing how various populations can be affected. We also show the number of contamination rounds needed to contaminate the whole population if nothing is done to stop the contamination process.

Coronavirus; face mask; mathematical model; epidemiology; simulation; 92C99; 03C65; info:eu-repo/semantics/article; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion; Peer-reviewed Article

Open access content. Open access content
Copyright (c) 2023 Tchilabalo Abozou Kpanzou, Edoh KATCHEKPELE, Essomanda TCHANDAO
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

application/pdf
English

INMJM oai:ojs2.malayajournal.org:article/299
10.26637/mjm1103/005
1391125527

MALAYA JOURNAL OF MATEMATIK
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