The covid virus particle is smaller than what those 99.9 BFE surgical masks that people are wearing can filter. So surgical also not giving the protection.
The virus can enter thru your eyes too. No eye protection for most people.
Surgical masks only good at reducing the number of droplets when someone cough or sneeze (which btw some clowns will pull down to cough/sneeze)
At this stage all the indoor mask wearing also pointless.
Anyway even if no more mask mandates, people here will continue to wear for false sense of security.
Main issue is the surgical mask leakage at the sides part.
Yes, BFE is the test at 3.0 microns. But there are tests for PFE too (0.1 microns) for masks, some flat surgical masks (for one reason or another) do not meet that PFE standard though even for the filter. There is actually a surgical and KF94 mask thread here that has good info. Regardless, the better surgical masks do offer ok protection, but only if the filter is used and side leaks are minimized with some mods or some devices/contraptions like mask fitters or say that elastomeric respirator mask developed here in SG that uses cut out filters (forgot the name)
But of coz, vast majority of people wont use such things one lah.
The respiratory particles (aerosolised one) ranges from 5 microns down to about 0.6 or 0.7 microns for the smallest and totally dessicated respiratory particle after minutes/tens of minutes of evaporation. The virion (virus) sticks to all those remaining stuff like proteins and even other virions.
So there is no such thing as 1 single virion of 0.08 microns to 0.12 microns in the air.
As for the eyes (ocular mucosa route), what was found was that aerosolised infection transmission is extremely extremely low (relative to mouth and nose), unless close range more direct route as in higher viral load levels in the air.
ie think of it as a smoker, aerosolised, @ 1m, 2m, 10-20 metres. Smoke concentration, and then ID50 / infectious dose 50% chance. Yes theorectically in an enclosed and totally dead air space small room the air mixture is pretty even, but that is not so in the reality and distance still could matter a bit with drafts and bigger air spaces and HVAC zones and what nots....like in a food court you might smell cooking oil smoke in a particular part but not so in another zone due to how they handle the airflow, even though same food court. Ultimately the risk is still many many times lower than mouth/nose.