Maria Elena Bottazzi, professor and associate dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development: “Vaccination as well as face mask wearing, and other nonpharmaceutical interventions have been crucial for the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. As Pan American Health Organization Director Carissa Etienne highlighted, many in the Americas are yet to receive a single dose, and those who have received a Covid-19 vaccine will require boosters to continue protecting the population against the virus variants of concern. For example, in Central America alone, as of April 8 approximately 20 million people are still waiting to be vaccinated, with Guatemala and Honduras having the highest inequity gap of 10.26 million and 4.76 million unvaccinated people, respectively. Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development (Texas Children’s CVD), in partnership with the Public Health Informatics, Computational and Operations Research team at City University of New York recently published in The Lancet Public Health, a simulation in the United States to ascertain the value of using face masks indoors on the basis of different Covid-19 vaccination coverage levels. Our findings support the need to maintain face mask use, especially in locations where vaccine access and coverage is low (below 70 percent coverage). From a societal perspective…”