UCSF Health Joins Top U.S. Hospitals for National #MaskUp Campaign Amid COVID-19 Surge

As the United States endures a third wave of COVID-19 cases, public health officials and the medical community continue to point to one simple – and effective – intervention: wearing a face mask.

On Thursday, UCSF Health joined 100 of the nation’s top health care systems, representing thousands of hospitals nationwide, in launching a national campaign urging people to do their part. The Every Mask Up campaign is running across social media and digital platforms, with public service messages also in The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people wear face masks in public settings and anywhere they will be around other people, citing studies that prove that wearing face masks successfully limits the spread of the coronavirus.

A recent UCSF paper also shows that it’s likely that face masks, by blocking even some of the virus-carrying droplets you inhale, can reduce the wearer’s risk of falling seriously ill from COVID-19. Monica Gandhi, MD, an infectious disease specialist, and colleagues proposed in the paper in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that masks can lead to milder or asymptomatic infections by cutting down on the dose of virus people take in.

Learn more about the campaign and proper face mask usage at www.everymaskup.com.