'Reusable respirator masks could be a lifeline for health care workers trying to protect themselves while treating coronavirus patients.
They provide the same level of protection as disposable N95 respirators, which are in short supply around the world. They can be easily disinfected between patients and shifts. And they last for months.
But the nation’s emergency supply of medical equipment never stocked them, despite years of research predicting dire shortfalls of disposable respirators during a pandemic and recommendations to stockpile reusable ones.
The decision not to buy them for the Strategic National Stockpile is inexplicable to Tom Frieden, who led the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until 2017.
“You can get one to a health care worker and say, ‘Here's how you clean it and it's yours for the duration of the pandemic,’” Frieden told USA TODAY. “And those are on the market."'
[...] In addition to disposable masks, that study recommended stockpiling reusable respirators over air-purifying devices because they cost less and are easier to use.
Officials running the national stockpile should have bought reusable respirators, said Lisa Pompeii, a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine.
Pompeii is the lead author of a study published last week that concluded health care workers could be quickly fitted for reusable respirators and trained on how to use them.'
https://www.usatoday...tor/5118669002/
'Boston hospitals getting ‘game changer’ machine that sterilizes 80,000 protective masks a day
The move could potentially serve all hospitals within the state and address a crisis for health-care workers'
https://www.bostongl...Cuj5iYIzXIKS6oo
'Several randomized trials have not found any statistical difference in the efficacy of surgical masks versus N95 FFRs at lowering infectious respiratory disease outcomes for healthcare workers.39-43
Most reviews have failed to find any advantage of one intervention over the other. Recent meta-analyses found that N95 FFRs offered higher protection against clinical respiratory illness [...] but not viral infections or influenza-like illness.
A recent pooled analysis of two earlier trials comparing medical masks and N95 filtering facepiece respirators with controls (no protection) found that healthcare workers continuously wearing N95 FFRs were 54% less likely to experience respiratory viral infections than controls (P = 0.03), while those wearing medical masks were only 12% less likely than controls (P = 0.48; result is not significantly different from zero).
While the data supporting the use of surgical masks as PPE in real-world settings are limited, the two meta-analyses and the most recent randomized controlled study combined with evidence of moderate filter efficiency and complete lack of facepiece fit lead us to conclude that surgical masks offer very low levels of protection for the wearer from aerosol inhalation. There may be some protection from droplets and liquids propelled directly onto the mask, but a faceshield would be a better choice if this is a concern.'
http://www.cidrap.um...ased-sound-data
'Morris and his co-authors originally stated that aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 likely isn't the primary driver of transmission in "everyday settings," but could pose a danger in health care settings where specialized equipment is used. However, a recent account of members in a large choir group who tested positive for COVID-19 after rehearsal raises the possibility that aerosols may drive transmission beyond the bounds of a hospital.
"It's now clear that aerosol risks are not negligible for everyday people, particularly in poorly-ventilated indoor areas," Morris wrote in a tweet posted March 31. That said, hospital settings still carry a "particularly elevated risk for aerosol transmission" of SARS-CoV-2, he noted.'
The team was able to detect viral RNA throughout the course of their 3-hour experiment, but that alone does not guarantee that the remaining virus was viable.
"You find an RNA on a surface, that doesn't mean that the virus … could infect somebody," said Aubree Gordon, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. To determine whether the virus was truly viable, the researchers grew the germ in cultured cells. These critical tests rendered the study "much stronger" than if the researchers had only looked for RNA, Gordon said.'
https://www.livescie...an-aerosol.html
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amphibian, on 02 April 2020 - 05:12 PM, said:
