Mers outbreak sparks surgical mask rush in Asia - but are they really effective?

As South Korea scrambles to control an outbreak of the killer Mers virus, its fearful citizens have donned surgical masks en masse – but the jury is out on whether they actually protect against the invisible enemy lurking in the air.

Across Asia, masks have lost their stigma to become an everyday sight in the street or on the subway, despite some experts believing they do little more than provide psychological reassurance against diseases such as MERS, which has already left 23 people dead in South Korea.

The virus, which arrived in the country with a businessman who had been travelling in the Middle East, has sparked a rush of orders at a small Japanese mask-maker, similar to that in the 2002-2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China.

“We have received 100,000 orders for our masks, 10 times more than the same time last year,” company president Tsuyoshi Nakagawara said.

“Half of them are from overseas, of which 70 per cent are from South Korea, while Hong Kong and (mainland) China account for the rest.”

The company’s most popular mask, a 9,980 yen (HK$629) model, is made with several layers of filters, which the firm claims are fine enough to block pollen, infectious viruses, PM2.5 – tiny airborne pollutants small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs – and even radioactive particles.