Tyler B. Helton MS*, Andrés E. Guerrero-Criado BS, Xinyi Huang MA, Mark Sigler MD
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought many public health issues to the forefront. One area of interest is the use of face masks for the reduction in disease dissemination. This observational study surveys the trend of public mask usage in Amarillo, TX, over two months during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that public mask usage would decrease during the data collection period due to “COVID Fatigue” in the region studied. For two hours per week, customers entering a local supermarket were counted and recorded as mask wearing or not mask wearing. The percentage of customers wearing masks over time was determined. The regional COVID-19 incidence rate was analyzed during this mask usage trend. A decrease in mask utilization was confirmed throughout May/June 2020 before policy interventions in July. Mask utilization was highest with a peak of 35.5% in May before a decrease to a floor of 13.9% in June. A significant increase in mask use following a state mask mandate and private policy change occurred. The mandate alone was not enough to cause a 100% compliance rate in the population, and the individual store policy change preceded the most significant increase. A strong negative correlation between mask usage and active coronavirus cases in Amarillo was observed. This study revealed a trend of decreasing compliance with mask utilization over time and suggests that maximum compliance with mask use requires a combination of both public health policy and private business policy implementation.
Keywords: Masks, trends, coronavirus, public policy, public health, compliance, epidemiology
Article citation: Helton TB, Guerrero-Criado AE, Huang X, Sigler M. Chronological association of public face mask usage with the progression of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in a medium-sized Texas city. The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles 2021;9(41):20–27
From: Department of Internal Medicine (TBH, AE G-C, MS), Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Amarillo, Texas; The University of South Carolina (XH), Columbia, South Carolina
Submitted: 10/14/2020
Accepted: 10/9/2021
Reviewer: Gilbert Berdine MD
Conflicts of interest: none
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
* All authors contributed equally to this study.