Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has joined disease experts in urging for medical-grade masks to become compulsory amid fears over the infection rate of new mutant strains of Covid.
Some epidemiologists fear that cloth masks, which are often homemade, are not enough to protect against the new variants of the virus.
Trisha Greenhalgh, a professor of primary care at the University of Oxford, said "the context has changed" over the course of the pandemic and everyone should be wearing medical-grade coverings.
Prof Greenhalgh tweeted on Sunday: "Double-layer cloth masks seemed OK when a) supplies of PPE were very low, b) virus was less contagious, c) incidence was lower. "The context has changed.
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