Fauci explained the early advice against masks by saying: “The public-health community — and many people were saying this — were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply.”

N95 masks are higher-grade equipment than ordinary masks and mainly used by medical workers.

He added that the government did not want healthcare workers “to be without the equipment that they needed … We were afraid that that would deter away the people who really needed it.”

The government also knows more about the effectiveness of different types of masks than it did at the beginning, he said.