Health experts fear that silent carriers of the virus who have no symptoms could unwittingly infect others at protests where people are packed cheek to jowl, many without masks.

“Whether they’re fired up or not, that doesn’t prevent them from getting the virus,” said Bradley Pollock, chairman of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of California, Davis…

Even for the many protesters wearing masks, those don’t guarantee protection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cloth masks keep infected people from spreading the virus but are not designed to protect wearers from getting it.

On Sunday, many Americans were returning to in-person church services for the first time in many weeks as some emergency measures are lifted and mosques reopened across the Middle East, but in countries from India to Colombia the number of new infection was still on the rise.