FEMA Diverts 100,000 Masks Slated for Iowa

Anyone Who Pays  for Bottled Water Will Want a High Efficiency Mask

Hotels Installing HEPA Filters, Foot Sanitizers and UV Disinfection Systems

Dental Office Installs HEPA Filter in HVAC and Room Purifiers in Key Areas

Rapid Coronavirus Test by Abbott Poses Risks

Partitions for Chicken Processing Plants from Cantrell-Gainco

Restaurants in California are Reopening with Safeguards

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FEMA Diverts 100,000 Masks Slated for Iowa

An Iowa agency's order of nearly 100,000 high-quality masks to aid in its coronavirus response was canceled last month after President Donald Trump invoked his authority to give the federal government priority for obtaining and distributing those supplies, according to a top state official and documentation obtained by the Des Moines Register.

Kelly Garcia, director of the Iowa Department of Human Services, confirmed to the Register that her request for 98,500 N95 respirator masks was canceled late last month after a supplier in western Iowa alerted her staff that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, under authority from the president, would distribute those supplies.

Iowa received nearly 300,000 pieces of personal protective equipment, or PPE, from the federal government in recent weeks, according to FEMA. But for DHS, obtaining critical supplies has sometimes meant ordering lower quality masks to protect its workers.

In Iowa, Garcia described the canceled order as a "disruption" to her agency. She has continued to order smaller batches of medical supplies through the Iowa supplier, though not N95 masks.

DHS does not have any current outstanding orders with the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Management, which handles FEMA orders.

"We are thankful to our partners in emergency management and in the Governor’s Office for providing us back up supply after this disruption," Garcia said in an email. "Because of the large quantity we require, we have concerns regarding our ongoing need.”

Anyone Who Pays  for Bottled Water Will Want a High Efficiency Mask

The evidence mounts that wearing  an efficient tight fitting mask is more important than social distancing. The cleanroom and air pollution industries have long known that small particles travel long distances. A few months ago the advice was that the viruses are contained in large droplets which only travel a few feet. When this was proved to be incorrect, the advice was don’t worry about small long distance traveling viruses because they are dead on arrival. Now we are told this these viruses are not dead they are just dormant. They travel in small aerosols which penetrate the lungs. The moisture in the lungs revives them to do their damage.

The viruses generated by an individual can be viewed as if they were cigarette smoke. The farther away you are the fewer the smoke particles which you will inhale  An individual may be emitting thousands of particles but if you are 20 feet away you may only be inhaling a few of them. So we then have to wonder what is a minimum infectious dose. It has been pegged as low as 10 virus particles. However, most people do not seem to become infected at these very low dosages.

The 6 feet social distancing assumes that the small aerosols will be dispersed in all directions. But if you were in front of an air conditioner in one Chinese restaurant, you were continually  being bombarded by aerosols from a diner at a far distant table.

The benefits of wearing masks to remove a few small viruses can be viewed as equivalent to drinking bottled water. In an area where you have a good chance of contracting cholera from the local water, bottled water is a necessity. But in most modern cities around the world the benefits of bottled water are questionable. Even so people spend close to $300 billion per year for bottled water.  Even if the risks from coronavirus diminish it is very likely that the  same people who buy bottled water will spent hundreds of billions of dollars per year for masks.

The healthcare opportunity is big but the N80 mask potential could be 3 billion people x $10 to $50 per year or $30 billion to $150 billion per year. Vogmask  has an N95 mask which sells for $30 and is washable probably 20 times. This could be the selection for 500 million more affluent people ($300/year x 500 million = $150 billion maximum.)

 

 

Protective face masks are a common accessory in countries such as Japan, where they are meant to prevent the spread of illness, and China, where they are often used as protection against air pollution.

Japan has not had a lockdown. The only major safety measure has been masks. Japan’s population is about 38% of the U.S., but even adjusting for population, the Japanese death rate is a mere 2% of America’s.

Mitsutoshi Horii, a sociology professor at Shumei University in Japan, has studied the use of face masks in Japanese culture. He said that wearing the masks, a practice imported from the United States in 1919 after the Spanish influenza outbreak the year prior, evolved over the course of the 20th century into an accessory people use to deal with a variety of problems, such as airborne disease, air pollution and allergies.

Mr. Horii also sees the masks as a form of control over contemporary anxieties, like some religious rituals and superstitions. “When people feel uncertainty, masks are very easily accessible,” he said. “By wearing them people just feel safe, like they are doing something.” 

Hotels Installing HEPA Filters, Foot Sanitizers and UV Disinfection Systems

The Singapore-based Lux Collective, which has high-end properties from France to the Maldives, is hiring “trained Covid-19 officers” to enforce new regulations such as daily temperature checks at exit and entry points, masks and gloves for employees, and the use of “shoe sanitizing mats” at gym entrances, among other changes, according COO Dominik Ruhl.

Avani Hotels & Resorts is rolling out new health and safety measures across its portfolio. Named AvaniSHIELD, the programme will see all 32 properties in 18 countries gradually adopt a range of heightened hygiene and sanitizing standards to ensure the health and safety of guests and team members.

The primary initiatives will be driven by the adoption of new technology, such as digital check-in/check-out as well as concierge service, copper protection coating, UVC light and HEPA-grade air purifiers, all in compliance with the guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

 

 

 

Dental Office Installs HEPA Filter in HVAC and Room Purifiers in Key Areas

Dr. Michael Lamastra is preparing for the day Maple Dental in Amherst NY can fully reopen. In addition to ordering all of the proper PPE, like face shields and isolation gowns, he's been listening to webinars and following guidelines to best ready the office.

“I've ordered new windows that open so they'll be installed next week,” he said.

He's also placed air filters throughout the office and in the furnace. The biggest concern are the aerosols that spray into the air when they use specific tools.

“But according to recent studies they've done, if you have an assistant with high speed suction, it will take out up to 90% of the aerosols,” Dr. Lamastra said.

He will also be limiting the amount of people in his office by having patients wait for their appointment in the car and he will take patients temperatures. These are all new rules in order to get patients back in the chair safely.

Rapid Coronavirus Test by Abbott Poses Risks

Lab personnel say worries are mounting over the safety of a rapid coronavirus test by Abbott Laboratories that President Donald Trump has repeatedly lauded ― particularly, the risk of infection to those handling it.

Trump and federal health officials have promoted the ease with which the Abbott test can be given to patients, whether at a drive-thru site or a doctor’s office. Another selling point: The test could “save personal protective equipment (PPE),” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Yet medical workers say that there’s a serious danger in the test’s design, one that would require much more protection — not less ― for those who administer it.

Running a test involves swabbing a potentially infected person’s nasal passage and swirling the specimen in an open container with liquid chemicals, raising the potential of releasing the highly contagious virus into the air.

When HHS announced it had bought tens of thousands of Abbott’s point-of-care tests for public labs and others across the country, it noted that “only gloves and a facemask are necessary” to administer it.

The notion of donning less protection runs contrary to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and medical workers fear that they could be infected while testing others.

Abbott says the test can return a positive result in as little as five minutes. And its development was welcome news for governors and hospitals across the nation desperately searching for COVID tests for patients and scarce protective gear for medical workers.

“What makes this test so different is where it can be used: outside the four walls of a traditional hospital such as in the physicians’ office or urgent care clinics,” says Abbott Labs on its website. It has already been deployed in public health labs and several drive-thru sites, where people wait in parking lots normally occupied by casino- and cinema-goers.

 

But lab officials and medical diagnostic experts say running the Abbott machine — used for years to detect other pathogens, including the flu ― requires a technician to leave patient specimens out in the open. Gloves and a mask alone would not protect them.

Standard precautions for biosafety protection in labs include good hand hygiene and the use of lab coats or gowns, gloves and eye protection to protect medical workers when a specimen is being manipulated, according to the CDC. Health workers collecting specimens should wear an N95 mask and other PPE.

To run the Abbott test, medical workers or patients themselves swab an individual’s nasal cavity to collect a specimen. Then, the swab is put back into its original wrapping, potentially exposing workers to contaminated materials when they handle it, according to Michael Pentella, the head of Iowa’s state public health lab who chairs the Association of Public Health Laboratories’ biosafety and biosecurity committee.

Abbott’s instructions direct workers to “vigorously mix” the swab with liquid in an open vessel in the machine for 10 seconds — a kind of open system that Pentella called “unusual.”

“This is the only test I know of where you take the swab and you put it back in the paper wrapping,” said Pentella, who hasn’t used the Abbott rapid tests in his lab but has heard concerns about safety from colleagues. “It’s the contamination that could be associated with the wrapper that has some biosafety professionals concerned.”

Partitions for Chicken Processing Plants from Cantrell-Gainco

Cantrell•Gainco Group, a U.S.-based manufacturer of yield enhancement and yield tracking systems and other equipment for poultry operations, announces the introduction of new Safety Separation Partitions. These new safety partitions preserve visibility and sightlines while offering enhanced protection and separation for operators working on poultry cone lines, trim/debone lines, wing segmenting lines, various types of workstations and tables, plus other OEM equipment.

The partitions are constructed of a highly durable, washdown-safe engineered polymer material and stainless steel. The shape and length of the partitions can be made to fit different equipment requirements. Partitions slide on an overhead rail for custom spacing and lift or remove easily for washdown sanitation procedures.

Commenting on the introduction of Cantrell•Gainco’s new safety separation partitions, Sid Adkins, vice president of sales, marketing and service operations stated, “In these times of heightened workplace health concerns, we’re offering a solution that gives processing line workers more protection – and it’s a solution that’s easy to implement. Poultry processors can add our partitions easily and cost-effectively to their existing processing lines and equipment.”

Adkins notes that while the standard product offering is a ¼” Clear Lexan material, other materials are also available including FRP fiber-reinforced plastic, solid white UHMW, and stainless steel. Each partition includes a rugged stainless steel hanger with rubber grommets for durability, as well as flexibility in sliding and positioning on the overhead rail.

Safety Separation Partitions from Cantrell•Gainco are readily available in standard and custom configurations. In addition, the company is committed to working closely with processors to codevelop additional solutions for promoting healthy environments in poultry plants.

Restaurants in California are Reopening with Safeguards

Restaurants are  being asked to "Consider installing portable high-efficiency air cleaners, upgrading the building’s air filters to the highest efficiency possible, and making other modifications to increase the quantity of outside air and ventilation in all working areas." This may include the use of ultraviolet light technology that's been used in hospitals for decades and has been shown to be highly effective at killing airborne pathogens.

Restaurants are being encouraged to take over sidewalks and more outdoor spaces in order to create more distance and offer more outdoor seating. This follows on a request by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association last week for San Francisco to allow such moves, letting restaurants take over plazas, street parking spaces, and other public spaces when they are given the go-ahead to reopen, so that they can increase table capacity outside indoor dining areas.