Ohio company comes through in spite of FDA red tape and delays
An Ohio company has come up with a way to sterilize N95 masks up to 20 times. It took a lot of hell raising by the Ohio governor to get the FDA approval done. They can now sterilize up to 80,000 masks a day in perfect safety. The FDA has granted approval for 10,000 mask batches so the process is slowed down by this hold up. 10,000 is a heck of a lot better than zero. I give kudos to governor DeWine (not a favorite politician in my book) for this action and public scolding of the FDA on this process hold up.
My concern for those front line medical folks runs deep, if they go down we will all be screwed.
0
-
Questions that come to mind. Where do these mask need transported to in order to be sterilized? What methods are required for the mask to be properly and safely collected, packaged, transported and unpacked, that will not spread diseases? How is this process faster or cheaper than producing new masks?
I can assure you as a healthcare professional I am not interested in wearing a used mask of this type, regardless of cleaning. Most mask are paper/fiber mask and are held in place by very thin rubber bands that can not handle much repetitive use. It is not the type of equipment that is reusable. Depending on use I may use one multiple times in a day before discarding it. I would reuse a mask in good shape if I am not wanting to breath on equipment or patients, such as when my hands are covered by sterile gloves, I am handling sterile equipment, I am dressing a central IV catheter, I am doing some types of wound care, and some other tasks. That mask would be used as a barrier to protect the patient from me and would be placed prior to the task and not touched during the task thus doing it's job and not increasing the risk for spreading an organism.
I would not reuse a mask that I wore for my protection against an infection carried by the patient. That mask will be removed and discarded using proper technique, preferably in an anteroom (not always possible) after each and every trip into that patient's room. That mask, and other barrier equipment has the potential to be infected with a known or suspected organism and should not be handled or reused after removal and disposal, not even during the same day.
The only answer to the disposable equipment shortage is to produce more equipment. Cleaning is a nice idea, maybe, but it isn't going to be feasible.0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
1 comment