Transcript of How to wear a mask
Dr Jan Fizzell, Senior Medical Advisor: Some people in NSW are choosing to use a mask when they're not able to physically distance.
Wearing a mask can help prevent you giving COVID-19 to other people.
It's really important though that we use our mask correctly so that we reduce the risk that we're going to be contaminated or spread contamination around us.
The first thing we should do when we're about to put on a mask is to perform hand hygiene.
That means giving your hands a really good clean so that you're less likely to take any germs from your hands to your face while you're putting on the mask.
Next thing we do is make sure that we put on the mask by making sure it's thr ight way up.
We make sure that we've got our ear loops ready, then we put the mask on by touching an ear loop, taking it across our face and pulling it over the other ear.
We then need to adjust our mask to make sure that it's comfortable and so we're not going to keep fiddling with it after we've done it.
After we've touched our face, as always, it's a good idea to clean our hands.
When we're ready to take our mask off, because we've got out of that situation where we couldn't physically distance well, we need to be careful about how we take the mask off.
If it's a disposable mask like this one, please don't keep it and reuse it, make sure that you dispose of it.
If it's a cloth mask that you're taking off, you shouldn't wear it again that day. You should put it into a plastic bag, keep it safe until you can wash it at the end of the day. That's why you may need more than one cloth mask.
It's really important to do your hand hygiene before you go to touch your face and that you handle the mask only by the ear loops.