Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has joined growing calls for medical-grade masks to be made compulsory on public transport and in shops.

It comes as experts fear that cloth masks, which are often homemade, are not of a good enough quality to cope with the emerging new strains of COVID-19.

Mr Hunt said “last time we waited too long” before taking action on masks, adding “let’s not make the same mistake again”.

He also questioned whether the two-metre social distancing rule was sufficient.

Trisha Greenhalgh, a professor of primary care at the University of Oxford, said “the context has changed” and everyone should be wearing medical-standard coverings.

Prof Greenhalgh tweeted: “Double-layer cloth masks seemed OK when a) supplies of PPE were very low, b) virus was less contagious, c) incidence was lower.

“The context has changed. We need to be wearing medical-grade.”

Mr Hunt retweeted the post, adding: “I agree.”

In an interview with the Observer published on Sunday, the UK’s longest-serving health secretary said: “Current lockdown measures are just not working fast enough.”

He said he wanted to see FFP2 respirator masks, which filter both the inflow and outflow of air, made compulsory in public spaces such as shops and public transport.

Similar measures have already been imposed in Austria and parts of Germany.

American epidemiologist Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, is also calling for air filtering masks to be made mandatory in the US.

He tweeted: “Cloth just isn’t enough anymore folks.”

It comes as Britain’s nursing leaders have called on the government to urgently review whether standard surgical masks offer enough protection against highly transmissible strains of coronavirus.

One nurse said she felt staff were being treated like “lambs to the slaughter” due to the inadequacy of surgical masks.

The Royal College of Nursing has said it was aware some NHS trusts are using higher grade face masks in all parts of their hospitals, while others use standard face masks, thereby creating a “postcode lottery” for nursing staff.

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