Lambton's medical officer of health says physical distancing far outweighs the importance of wearing masks in the battle against COVID-19.
Dr. Sudit Ranade told Sue Storr on CHOK (103.9 FM, 1070 AM) Monday morning that he wouldn't get too hung up on whether people in Sarnia-Lambton are wearing masks.
"When you think about most places in which people are here, there's a really good chance that you can keep your distance from people," said Ranade. "If you can't, it's a really short period of time so it's not going to be a huge driver of disease transmission."
He conceded, however, that there is growing evidence of the effectiveness of masks.
"If you're in a place where you're going to be there for a long time, and you can not keep physical distance, for example, if you're in a subway and there's so many people around you, masks may be considered, they may be useful," he said.
Dr. Ranade also said the number of asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 in Sarnia-Lambton probably makes up about four to eight per cent of the total caseload.
"The number of people in Lambton who, when we followed them along and they said 'I feel well or I don't have symptoms', is sitting at around eight per cent. That's probably a little bit high, the true number is probably lower than that because there were some false positives in there and probably some people that actually did have symptoms and didn't remember them."
Dr. Ranade said for the 92 per cent of carriers that have some kind of symptoms, it's important they get a test and isolate themselves.
As of Sunday night, Sarnia-Lambton's caseload was unchanged at 285, and 244 had recovered, which is up one.
There are two active institutional outbreaks at Afton Park Place and at Bluewater Health.
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