TANZANIA’S new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, has stressed the importance of face masks in fighting COVID-19, ditching one of the most controversial policies of her late coronavirus-sceptic predecessor. Hassan took office in March after the death of John Magufuli, who had urged Tanzanians to shun masks and denounced vaccines as a Western conspiracy, to the frustration of the World Health Organization. Last month, she formed a committee to research whether Tanzania, which under Magufuli stopped reporting coronavirus data, should follow the course that the rest of the world has taken against the pandemic. Wearing a face mask and flanked by…