A new statistical study shows that if wearing of face masks had been made mandatory in April, 40,000 lives could have been saved during the coronavirus pandemic.

The study, published by the Center for Economic Policy Research, said mandatory mask use is essential for containing the coronavirus after the study authors compared statistics from places that did enforce the wearing of face masks and those that didn’t.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the results showed that mandating masks for employees in public in the U.S. for two months beginning April 1 would have reduce the death toll by 40%, or around 40,000 lives. They factored in other measures to control the coronavirus and found that wearing a mask proved to be more effective than even social distancing.

“Mandating masks is an attractive policy instrument especially because it involves relatively little economic disruption,” the authors wrote.

According to Business Insider, The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted that 179,000 people in America will die from COVID-19 by October 1. However, it added that if 95% of people wore face masks in public, the number of projected deaths would fall to 146,000, saving 33,000 lives over the next three months.