After the scientific community notified the world of the emergence of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, a debate has arisen on the efficacy of travel bans and international communication about the virus. However, as with prior variants, this hasn’t changed with Omicron: Vaccines, masks, and appropriate social distance are still the most effective weapons in your defense of you and your family’s safety and health.

“The best protection against this new variant is getting fully vaccinated and getting the booster shot,” President Biden said in a press conference on Nov. 29. “A fully vaccinated and boosted person is the most protected against COVID.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified the Omicron variant as a “variant of concern,” indicating that it may be more virulent and have a higher chance to evade immunity if contracted.

“I encourage everyone to wear a mask when you’re indoors or in crowded spaces,” Mr. Biden continued.

The Omicron variant is still a variant of the same virus identified in 2019, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)'s recommendations regarding masks have not changed since the last surge. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) approved N95 respirator masks are still considered the gold standard of safety, followed by KN95 masks made by manufacturers on the CDC’s whitelist. Surgical masks trail N95s and KN95s, and cloth masks fall far behind those (cloth masks, at this point, are a “better than nothing” option).

For this reason, the emergence of new variants highlights the importance of masks in the fight against the pandemic’s spread: while there are still questions about how effective vaccines and boosters will be against Omicron, the very same masks we’ve been using for the entirety of the pandemic have remained just as effective.

“The point of masks is to block respiratory droplets and aerosols containing viral particles,” a member of the Office of Communications and Government Relations at the National Institute of Health (NIH) said over email. “The masks are agnostic as to what virus is in the particles.”

In other words, masks work just as well against any disease that is spread via droplets and aerosols, and there’s no indication that Omicron is spread in a different way than earlier variants of the virus.

Joshua Sargent is the Senior News Editor, Commerce, for Hearst Newspapers. Before this job he wrote video games and comedy, which probably just made you say "ah, yeah, that makes sense."

Josh can play the guitar solo from Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne" almost exactly right and lives in Brooklyn, NY with a cat that "belongs" to him according to the "law."

Email him at josh.sargent@hearst.com.