Wearing Gloves to Protect Yourself from COVID-19 May Do More Harm Than Good

But do gloves protect you from COVID-19?

“There is no evidence that gloves can protect us from acquiring COVID-19,” says Stephen Berger, M.D, a board-certified infectious disease and microbiology physician, and founder of GIDEON, the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Online Network. “The modern version of surgical gloves was invented to prevent healthcare workers from passing the infection to the patient,” he adds. So gloves are probably more effective at preventing you from passing the virus to others than they are at protecting you from it — similar to fabric face masks.