Have 20/20 vision? You may want to start double up on your mask wearing. It turns out that people who wear glasses may be more protected from COVID-19 than those who don’t.

In a study published in a recent report on the pre-print site medRxiv, researchers found that people who wear glasses for at least eight hours each day are less likely to get the virus. Why? They tend to not touch or rub their eyes as much as those who don’t wear glasses, offering them a huge advantage. The study was published in a recent report on the pre-print site medRxiv.

While we know that the main way COVID-19 spreads is through droplets—e.g., when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks too close to somebody else, and the healthy person breathes in those particles—the virus can also infect you through the conjunctiva, aka the membranes that protect your eyes. That means the less you touch your face, the less risk you have for getting the virus.

“Touching and rubbing of the eyes with contaminated hands may be a significant route of infection for SARS-CoV-2 virus,” the researchers stated.

The study consisted of over 300 participants in India ages 10 through 80 who were hospitalized with COVID-19. After studying their glasses-wearing habits, researchers found that those who wear glasses were two to three less likely to contract COVID-19 than those who did not.

“[The] protective role of the spectacles was found statistically significant if those were used for [a] long period of the day,” the study found.

This is not the only data that backs up the connection between wearing glasses and not getting COVID-19. Another study published in JAMA Ophthalmology also found that people who wear glasses for long periods of a time each day may be less susceptible to testing positive for coronavirus.

Of course, don’t be fooled: you’re not immune to the virus simply because you wear glasses! It’s important to still take precautions by wearing masks, social distancing, practicing good hygiene and being wary of touching your face.

Additionally, if you wear glasses, you’ve probably realized by now that wearing both glasses and a mask don’t bode well with each other, since it makes your glasses easily fog up. Not to worry—there’s a hack for that!

Check out the video below for more details on the study, plus a great tip for getting rid of glasses fog when wearing a mask.

Do you wear glasses, or do you have good vision? Do you believe people who wear glasses are less susceptible to getting COVID-19 or that there’s any link at all? Why or why not?