health experts agree that masking is the key to preventing the spread of the coronavirus along with vaccines and social distancing. which masks do a better job? cnn s brian todd has the story. reporter: we have, wolf. it s led to serious confusion. even with the new guidance the cdc s director says their recommendation that wearing any mask is better than wearing no mask at all. we have new information on viewers on what the government is going to say on this. tonight a new effort to stem confusion about mask wearing during the pandemic. the cdc expected to update the guidance soon. the cdc and local health officials have recently said n 95 and kn 95 masks appear to give you the most protection against the surging omicron
delivering here later today, as well. mike, thank you so much. and turning back to the coronavirus pandemic. we ve been hearing from doctors it s time to upgrade your masks, but masks are not one-size-fits all. different people have different needs and different budgets. back with me is msnbc medical contributor dr. vitamin gupta. thank you so much for being with us. i had a ton of questions after your segment. everyone was appreciative but they want more information. let us dive in. there are folks out there asking if it ll help to do double masking, if you can t get an n-95. so, katy, good afternoon, certainly if you would like. if you have that blue mask. for many drugstores you can get the blue masks. if you want to put on top a well-fitted clothe masks. we ve been saying it the last 13 to 14 months even with the
quality masks available for free. we need more details on this, but how important is this? well, i think it s very important. you know, we ve been talk about this for a long time. people should wear masks and if you re going to wear a mask, which you should, it should be the most protective mas that can you can. we ve showed this before, but if you look at in the context of omicron now, given how transmissible this is, a cloth mask versus a surgical mask versus an n-95 mask, it s skrr clear. i don t think anyone disputes the fact that the n-95 mask will be the most protected here, 1% to 10% from the n-95 escaping versus more from the cloth mask. the vice president said there s a huge stockpile, 700 million. i m not sure what the confusion still is in terms of the messaging here because you re hearing, yes, next-95 masks are the best masks. we re in the middle of a storm of a very transmissible virus
wear an n 95 or kn 95 more than once? yes. you can wear it a rule of thumb is up to 40 hours of use. the filter does not go bad for days to weeks. experts now say with omicron, it s high time to upgrade from cloth. cloth masks are little more than facial deck core races. some say there s been way to be that we ourselves, the front line workers, other influential people have actually curated on what works and what doesn t work based on evidence. n 95 and kn 95s are not cheap. they ve averaged between 80 cents and $2 apiece.
infection, and there s been some studies done, one particular in south africa which shows that it does protect against delta and what s likely the case is that it will protect against serious illness. it may not protect against the same type of symptoms, runny nose, modest infection, and so we may still be dealing with some of that type of disruption, we ll have to see. but if it does indeed protect us against serious illness, that is going to be very, very good news because that will mean the country will have protection at least for the near and midterm. there was reporting in politico today in which a senior administration official argued that an effort to send surgical grade masks, n-95, kn-95, like actual respirators to americans would make little difference because a lot of people that won t wear masks. for people that voted for joe biden, support the president and say i voted for him, a lot about the pandemic, and trump was