It is important to note that although surgical masks can provide adequate protection in some low-risk environments for short periods of time, they do not provide a tight facial seal over the face, allowing over 50% of unfiltered air to escape.
This means that infection takes an hour to occur between two individuals equipped with surgical masks.
As surgical masks provide a loose-fitting design, their protection against COVID-19 can be considered questionable. Masks with this construction are used to collect splashes on both sides of the fabric. This deters contamination of the patient via drops of saliva from the surgeon's mouth while talking, in addition to protecting the medical professionals from blood and other bodily fluids. Surgical masks are tested on their filtering material, not on their fit.
The filtering layers within these masks only trap particles of between three (3) and seven (7), when most of the aerosols that we intake are smaller than three (3) microns. This results in other finer aerosols (such as the aerosols that transmit the COVID-19 virus) getting past the barrier and potentially infecting other individuals. Infection can take 1 hour.