Tag: PPE

Categories : Respiratory DiseasesTags :

An ‘Invisible Mask’ Air Curtain that Kills Viruses, Blocks 99.8% of Aerosols

On By ModernMedia
Taza Aya’s Worker Wearable Protection device keeps airborne virus particles from reaching a workers mouth and nose with an air curtain. That air is pre-treated to kill any viruses. Image credit: Jeremy Little, Michigan Engineering

An air curtain shooting down from the brim of a hard hat can prevent 99.8% of aerosols from reaching a worker’s face. The technology, created by University of Michigan startup Taza Aya, potentially offers a new protection option for workers in industries where respiratory disease transmission is a concern.

Independent, third-party testing of Taza Aya’s device showed the effectiveness of the air curtain, curved to encircle the face, coming from nozzles at the hat’s brim. But for the air curtain to effectively protect against pathogens in the room, it must first be cleansed of pathogens itself. Previous research by the group of Taza Aya co-founder Herek Clack, U-M associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, showed that their method can remove and kill 99% of airborne viruses in farm and laboratory settings.

“Our air curtain technology is precisely designed to protect wearers from airborne infectious pathogens, using treated air as a barrier in which any pathogens present have been inactivated so that they are no longer able to infect you if you breathe them in,” Clack said. “It’s virtually unheard of – our level of protection against airborne germs, especially when combined with the improved ergonomics it also provides.”

Fire has been used throughout history for sterilisation, and while we might not usually think of it this way, it’s what’s known as a thermal plasma. Nonthermal, or cold, plasmas are made of highly energetic, electrically charged molecules and molecular fragments that achieve a similar effect without the heat. Those ions and molecules stabilize quickly, becoming ordinary air before reaching the curtain nozzles.

Taza Aya’s prototype features a backpack, weighing roughly 10 pounds (4.5kg), that houses the nonthermal plasma module, air handler, electronics and the unit’s battery pack. The handler draws air into the module, where it’s treated before flowing to the air curtain’s nozzle array.

Taza Aya’s progress comes in the wake of the COVID pandemic and in the midst of a summer when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported four cases of humans testing positive for bird flu. During the pandemic, agriculture suffered disruptions in meat production due to shortages in labour, which had a direct impact on prices, the availability of some products and the extended supply chain.

In recent months, Taza Aya has conducted user experience testing with workers at Michigan Turkey Producers in Wyoming, Michigan, a processing plant that practices the humane handling of birds. The plant is home to hundreds of workers, many of them coming into direct contact with turkeys during their work day.

To date, paper masks have been the main strategy for protecting employees in such large-scale agriculture productions. But on a noisy production line, where many workers speak English as a second language, masks further reduce the ability of workers to communicate by muffling voices and hiding facial clues.

“During COVID, it was a problem for many plants – the masks were needed, but they prevented good communication with our associates,” said Tina Conklin, Michigan Turkey’s vice president of technical services.

In addition, the effectiveness of masks is reliant on a tight seal over the mouth and noise to ensure proper filtration, which can change minute to minute during a workday. Masks can also fog up safety goggles, and they have to be removed for workers to eat. Taza Aya’s technology avoids all of those problems.

As a researcher at U-M, Clack spent years exploring the use of nonthermal plasma to protect livestock. With the arrival of COVID in early 2020, he quickly pivoted to how the technology might be used for personal protection from airborne pathogens.

In October of that year, Taza Aya was named an awardee in the Invisible Shield QuickFire Challenge – a competition created by Johnson & Johnson Innovation in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The program sought to encourage the development of technologies that could protect people from airborne viruses while having a minimal impact on daily life.

“We are pleased with the study results as we embark on this journey,” said Alberto Elli, Taza Aya’s CEO. “This real-world product and user testing experience will help us successfully launch the Worker Wearable in 2025.”

Source: University of Michigan

Categories : COVID Ethics and LawTags :

COVID PPE Supplier Must Face the Music, Court Rules

On By ModernMedia

Pro Secure fails in bid to stop Special Investigating Unit going after it to recover millions of rands

Photo by J Castellon on Unsplash

A company accused of unlawfully benefiting from a multi-million rand contract to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) during the Covid pandemic, has failed in a bid to quash a summons issued against it by the Special Investigating Unit to recover the money.

Pro Secure raised several objections to the formulation of the case against it in the papers. But Special Tribunal Judge Kate Pillay has dismissed the company’s objections and ordered the company to pay the costs.

The SIU investigation uncovered irregularities in the Limpopo Department of Health’s appointment of service providers including Pro Secure, Clinipro and Ndia Business Trading, which resulted in about R182-million irregular and wasteful expenditure. The SIU initiated action against Pro Secure, alleging the company had made “secret profits”, and also instituted civil proceedings against the former head of health in the province, Dr Thokozani Florence Mhlongo.

In October 2022, the SIU secured an order from the Special Tribunal, effectively freezing Mhlongo’s pension fund until the outcome of the civil action against her. Mhlongo resigned in June that year while facing disciplinary charges.

In its application to the Tribunal, Pro Secure challenged the SIU’s legal standing, the fact that the Limpopo health department was not a party to the SIU action. Pro Secure also claimed that there was no allegation that its bid for the contract was not lawful.

Judge Pillay found there was no substance to any of the company’s arguments.

She said the particulars of claim in the civil action set out how Pro Secure had received a payment “significantly exceeding their initial bid”.

She said that according to the SIU, the request for quotation sent by the department was for 5000 automated hand sanitisers. Pro Secure had submitted a quote for 5000 white electronic hand disinfectant dispensers and for 5000 liquid sanitisers, the total amount being just over R7-million. Ultimately, the company had delivered 30 000 dispenser holders at R420 per unit and 900 000 litres of hand sanitiser at R170 a litre and had been paid almost R162-million.

In a statement, SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said: “This ruling supports the SIU’s stance on the irregular procurement of PPE by the Limpopo Department of Health during the pandemic.”

Republished from GroundUp under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Categories : HospitalsTags :

A New Easy-to-Apply Antimicrobial Coating

On By ModernMedia
Image by Quicknews

Researchers have developed an inexpensive, non-toxic coating for almost any fabric that decreases the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 by up to 90%. It could even be developed to be applied to fabric by almost anyone.

“When you’re walking into a hospital, you want to know that pillow you’re putting your head onto is clean,” said lead author Taylor Wright, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia. “This coating could take a little bit of the worry off frontline workers to have Personal Protection Equipment with antimicrobial properties.”

Researchers soaked fabric in a solution of an antimicrobial polymer which contains a molecule that releases reactive oxygen species when light shines on it. They then used UV light to turn this solution to a solid, fixing the coating to the fabric. “This coating has both passive and active antimicrobial properties, killing microbes immediately upon contact, which is then amped up when sunlight hits the cloth,” said senior author Professor Michael Wolf.

Both components are safe for human use, and the entire process takes about one hour at room temperature, said Wright. It also makes the fabric hydrophobic, without sacrificing fabric strength. The researchers detailed their study in American Chemical Society Applied Materials & Interfaces.

The coating can also be used on almost any fabric, with applications in hospital fabrics, masks, and activewear. While other such technologies can involve chemical waste, high energy use, or expensive equipment, the UBC method is relatively easy and inexpensive, said Wright. “All we need is a beaker and a light bulb. I’m fairly certain I could do the whole process on a stove.”

To test the coating’s antimicrobial properties, the researchers bathed treated fabric in bacterial soups of Escherichia coli and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). They found that 85% of viable E. coli bacteria remained after 30 minutes, which fell to three per cent when the treated cloth was exposed to green light for the same amount of time. Similarly, 95% of viable MRSA bacteria remained, dropping to 35% under green light. No bacteria remained after four hours.

While sunlight or fluorescent lights have a lesser percentage of green in their spectrums, the team expects similar but less intense results for fabric exposed to those light sources, said Wright. “Particularly in the Pacific Northwest, it’s not always a sunny day. So, at all times you’re going to have that layer of passive protection and when you need that extra layer of protection, you can step into a lit room, or place the fabric in a room with a green light bulb – which can be found for about $35 online.”

The researchers also looked into whether the coating reduced the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 by bathing treated fabric in a solution of the virus particles and then adding that solution to living cells to see if they could infect them. They found the passive properties were ineffective against the virus, but when treated fabric was exposed to green light for two hours, there was up to a 90% drop in the virus’ infectivity. “In other words, only one tenth of the amount of virus signal was detected on cells infected with the UV-fabric and light treated virus”, says co-author Professor François Jean.

The team found they needed an 18cm2 piece of fabric to kill microbes with material containing 7% of the active ingredient by weight, but that increasing this to 23% increased the effectiveness of the fabric at four times less material, said Wright.

Researchers also found that keeping the fabric under green light for more than 24 hours failed to produce the sterilising forms of oxygen, highlighting an area for further study. This is a similar effect to the colour fading on clothing after being exposed to sunlight for too long.

“Biomanufacturing face masks based on this new UBC technology would represent an important addition to our arsenal in the fight against COVID, in particular for highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern such as Omicron”, said Prof Jean. The coating can also be used for activewear, with an ‘anti-stink’ coating applied to areas where people tend to sweat, killing off the bacteria that makes us smell. Indeed, hospital fabric and activewear companies are already interested in applying the technology, and the university has applied for a patent in the United States, said Prof Wolf.

Source: University of British Columbia

Categories : COVIDTags :

New Mask Recycling Technology Could Cut Down on Waste

On By ModernMedia
Phot by Artem Podrez on Unsplash

Researchers have developed a way to quickly disinfect and electrostatically recharge used N95 respirators, restoring their effectiveness against COVID and other airborne diseases.

In their study published in Environment Science & Technology, the University of South Florida (USF) team showed their sterilisation technology could restore an N95 respirator’s original filtration efficiency of about 95 percent, even after 15 cycles of treatment. The technology fights coronavirus by using corona discharge, an electrical technique which simultaneously deactivating pathogens on a mask and restoring its electrostatic charges. It doesn’t require heat, or chemicals or contact, making it safe and convenient to use. It is safer than ultraviolet (UV) radiation and uses little electricity.

As well as restoring protection, the corona discharge treatment can reduce the impact of used masks on the environment. In a report by OceansAsia, a marine conservation organisation, 1.56 billion face masks polluted the oceans in 2020 and will likely take more than 450 years to fully decompose. The researchers say the technology will limit mask consumption to dozens each year instead of hundreds.

“It is a reduction of 90 percent for each user. If we assume that 10 percent of the population all over the world takes advantage of corona discharge mask reuse technology, there will be four- five billion fewer masks disposed to the environment,” said project lead Ying Zhong, assistant professor in the USF Department of Mechanical Engineering. “It will reduce at least 24 million tons of plastic pollution and reduce the amount of chemicals used for mask disinfection and avoid their environmental impact.”

“Despite the challenging conditions of the pandemic, this was the most thrilling project that I have ever worked on. We wish our research advances the understanding of how corona discharge disinfection can be turned into products on the market as soon as possible,” said co-project lead Libin Ye, assistant professor in the USF Department of Cell Biology, Molecular Biology and Microbiology.

The researchers are now working to develop this technology into products for hospitals and use by the general public, including handheld sterilisation devices.

Source: EurekAlert!

Categories : COVID HospitalsTags : 1 Comment

Upgrade to FFP3 Face Mask Dramatically Cuts Infections

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Artem Podrez from Pexels

Upgrading face masks to filtering face piece (FFP3) respirators for healthcare workers on COVID wards produced a dramatic reduction in hospital acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections, according to a preliminary study published in the BMJ.

For most of 2020, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust followed national guidance that healthcare workers should use fluid resistant surgical masks as respiratory protective equipment unless aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) were being carried out when FFP3 respirators were advised.

From the pandemic’s outset, the trust has been regularly screening its healthcare workers for SARS-CoV-2 even when asymptomatic. They found that healthcare workers on “red” COVID wards had a greater infection risk than staff on “green” wards, even with protective equipment. So in December 2020 the trust implemented a change in policy so that staff on red wards wore FFP3 masks instead of fluid resistant surgical masks. The FFP3 standard requires that masks filter 99% of all particles measuring up to 0.6 μm.

The study was carried out at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Before the change in policy, cases among staff were higher on COVID versus non-COVID wards in seven out of eight weeks analysed. Following the change in protective equipment the incidence of infection on the two types of ward was similar. Of 609 positive results over the eight week study period, 169 were included in the study. Healthcare workers who were not ward based or worked between different wards were excluded, as were, non-clinical staff, and staff working in critical care areas.

The researchers developed a simple mathematical model to quantify the risk of infection for healthcare workers. This found that the risk of direct infection from working on a red ward prior to the policy change was 47 times greater than the corresponding risk from working on a green ward. While almost all cases on green wards were likely caused by community-acquired infection, cases on red wards at the beginning the study period were attributed mainly to direct, ward-based exposure.

The model also suggested that the introduction of FFP3 respirators provided 100% protection (confidence interval 31.3%, 100%) protection against direct, ward based covid infection.

Study author Chris Illingworth, from the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “Before the face masks were upgraded, the majority of infections among healthcare workers on the COVID wards were likely because of direct exposure to patients with COVID. Once FFP3 respirators were introduced, the number of cases attributed to exposure on COVID wards dropped dramatically—in fact, our model suggests that FFP3 respirators may have cut ward based infection to zero.”

Michael Weekes from the department of medicine at the University of Cambridge added: “Our data suggest there’s an urgent need to look at the PPE offered to healthcare workers on the frontline. Upgrading the equipment so that FFP3 masks are offered to all healthcare workers caring for patients with COVID could reduce the number of infections, keep more hospital staff safe, and remove some of the burden on already stretched healthcare services caused by absence of key staff because of illness.”

Source: The BMJ

Journal information: BMJ 2021;373:n1663

Categories : Medical Research & TechnologyTags :

New Biomaterials Could Boost Vaccines or Self-sterilise PPE

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Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science describe two technologies currently being researched that could be of great benefit in fighting viruses.

These technologies could enhance the effectiveness of vaccines, and also make surfaces destructive to viruses.

“It is important not just in terms of COVID,” explained author Kaushik Chatterjee. “We’ve seen SARS, and MERS, and Ebola, and a lot of other viral infections that have come and gone. COVID has, of course, taken a different turn altogether. Here, we wanted to see how biomaterials could be useful.”

The technologies combine the field of biomaterials, which are designed to interact with biological systems, along with nanotechnology, where structures are engineered on a tiny scale. Biomaterials have been used for dental implants and joint replacements, while nanotechnology has been harnessed for drug delivery systems.

One application the authors describe is the combination of nanotechnology and biomaterial could be used to prepare the immune system to recognise vaccine antigens.

“It is a means of stimulating the immune cells which produce antibodies during the vaccination,” explained author Sushma Kumari. “It is like a helper, like priming the cells. Now, the moment they see the protein, the cells are more responsive to it and would be secreting more antibodies.”

Another technology application is surfaces that disinfect themselves. By putting an electrical charge onto the surfaces, they could be made into a hostile coating that damages or destroys virus particles when they fall onto them. These surfaces could be used for PPEs and high-touch items such as doorknobs. This would save considerable time, effort and expense in regularly disinfecting surfaces with chemicals or UV irradiation. A similar existing technology is the use of silver nanoparticles as antibacterial medical device coatings.

This technology is very much in its early stages, the researchers stressed. Research needs to be done on which biomaterials are suitable for fighting viruses, and the solution for one disease may not be applicable to another.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: “Biomaterials-based formulations and surfaces to combat viral infectious diseases” APL Bioengineering, DOI: 10.1063/5.0029486