By Spy Uganda
The Bank of Uganda Governor Prof. Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile is not taking any chances with COVID-19 and while other people are using face masks, he prefers to wear a glass shield to protect himself against the deadly virus.
Prof. Tumusiime Mutebile does not trust anyone, not even legislators and he took it upon himself to prove this by appearing before Members of Parliament on Wednesday this week wearing his anti-COVID-19 glass protection shield.
It should be noted that although the Ministry of Health encourages all Ugandans to wear face masks at all times, the protective glass shield like the one Prof. Mutebile wears is another measure of preventing the spread of COVID-19, although the shields are a bit costly.
Health experts contend that these protective plastic glass shields are usually recommended for people who do not feel comfortable wearing face masks due to respiratory complications.
Some experts say face shields are better than masks for Coronavirus protection
By now we know we should be wearing face masks to protect others from potentially deadly infection when we leave the house. But face masks can be hot, and can irritate the skin, fog glasses, make it difficult for some to breathe and create a world without smiles. It also can be difficult for people who have hearing loss to communicate when mouths are covered, muffling voices and hiding facial expressions.
The Ministry of Health continues to recommend wearing “cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” But some health experts say shields appear to be very effective at preventing infection — maybe even more effective than masks — for someone going about regular daily activities and not in a high-risk health care setting.
Amesh Adalja, M.D., a pandemic preparedness expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, says, “There’s a lot of at least biological possibility to suspect that shields are definitely better than homemade face masks, and maybe even better than other types of masks as well, because they not only prevent you from spreading it … and because it also covers your eyes, it provides more protection to the mucus membranes of your face where you might be getting infected.”
James Cherry, M.D., a distinguished research professor and infectious disease expert at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says that while experts aren’t yet sure about how vulnerable our eyes are to infection from this coronavirus, “With many viruses, the eyes are important.” He points to measles and adenoviruses as examples of viruses that are known to infect people through their eyes.
