June 18, 2020 Mask Policy Webinar is the Basis for Future Analysis and Discussion

Mogul has Unique Face Mask Media

Fibertex has Nanofiber Media for Masks and Respirators

Two New Community Classifications for Face Masks

The World is in a New and Dangerous Phase

Hotels are Investing in Air Filters and Sanitizers

Air Conditioning in the South will Present a Real Problem

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June 18, 2020 Mask Policy Webinar is the Basis for Future Analysis and Discussion

This webinar was originally slated as three five-minute speeches and then a one-hour discussion based on a slide deck covering the mask selection issues. Due to the high quality and interest in the three presentations the discussion continued for more than one hour. Bob McIlvaine then provided a 30-minute overview in a separate recording.

To view the three speeches and discussions click here: https://youtu.be/lwVpSB7mkHk

The agenda is displayed at: http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/images/2020-06-18_Webinar/Agenda_for_Mask_Policy_06-18-20.pdf

The presenter power points are also posted.

Wendover Brown Vogmask: http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/images/2020-06-18_Webinar/Covid-19_Tech_Solutions_PPT_Vogmask.pdf

Jerry Fan, Mogul: http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/images/2020-06-18_Webinar/Madaline-face_mask_application.pdf

Jayesh Doshi, eSpin: http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/images/2020-06-18_Webinar/Mcilvaine_MASK%20Webinar_06182020Reduced.pdf

The overview by Bob McIlvaine can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/t38NEZteqgM

His power points can be viewed here: http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/images/2020-06-18_Webinar/Mask_Webinar_06-18-20.pdf

A background analysis reviewing all the factors is found at  Mask Policy Review

The overview covered all the factors which determine the value of wearing masks and why there is a world of difference in mask and media design. There is mounting evidence that high efficiency masks are just as important as social distancing. There is a consensus starting to build around mask selection based on virus, wearer, environment factors. This will result in a range of masks with efficiencies of 70, 90 and 95 percent.  McIlvaine is continually evaluating the options in the daily alerts and will conduct a series of future webinars to discuss and debate the options.

 

Mogul has Unique Face Mask Media

Mogul is in the top 40 worldwide non-woven manufacturers. In the webinar yesterday Jerry Fan presented data on Madaline which is uniquely suited for face masks.

Madaline™ Unique Properties

•      Physical barrier blocks most bacterial, allergens, and bedding mite

             – dense and micropore structure

•      Breathable – micro channels allow air and vapor penetration

•      Moisture management – capillary effect instantly transfers and absorbs water, sweat and moisture

•      Thermal Insulation – dense and microspore structure resists wind and reduces heat transfer

•      Quick drying – huge internal surface area promotes drying process,

            2 – 3 times faster than terry cotton

•      Softness – microfilament nature

•      Lint free – composed of endless microfilament

•      Like traditional woven fabric – similar comfort hand feel and easy to convert into finished products

•      Durable and machine washable

•      Good 3D shape memory

Recently the Madaline™ microfilament cloth has been selected by the French government and recommended for making reusable and washable face masks for the general public.

Per the General Directorate of Armament (DGA), 100 gsm Madaline™ microfilament cloth (after 10 machine-washing cycles) has an air permeability and a performance in terms of protection efficiency against aerosols of 3 µm compatible with use as a category 1 mask (individual mask for use by professionals in contact with the public).

Jerry’s presentation was recorded and linked above as is the power point set

 

Fibertex has Nanofiber Media for Masks and Respirators

Kari Luukkonen, Business Development Director participated in the webinar yesterday and informed us of some of their related activities.

“We are selling quite a lot of FFP2/N95 nano fibered layers which can be used in respirators together with outer and inner PP spunbond layers.

Additionally, we now also have FFP2 and FFP3 “single layer” products requiring no additional layers. These can be also used as replaceable filter pieces in reusable masks, like the fabric masks where you have a pocket for replaceable filter.

In addition to nanofiber layers we also supply lot of moulding layers for cup type masks based on needlefelt and spun lace.  One new grade is 65 % bacterial filtration efficiency washable “civil mask” materials we produce now in France.”

“Kari also told us about important new standards developments in Europe and promised to send us the details which he did along with this message.

This was released just today, outlines for EU new classes for general public masks.

In a nutshell two new classes introduced, 70 % and 90 % efficiency classes against 3-micron particles, whereas official surgical masks are on 95-98 % efficiency level of 3 micron aerosols, N95/FFP2 respirators over 99% efficiency on same particle size like the aerosol used for bacterial filtration efficiency determination”

 

Two New Community Classifications for Face Masks

The European Committee for Standardization has drafted standards for two efficiency levels for community masks. This is an important initiative and will help the public to understand that there is a world of difference in protection provided by different media and mask designs. Here is the section on filtration efficiency.

The full document can be viewed at http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/images/2020-06-18_Webinar/CWA17553_2020.pdf

 

The World is in a New and Dangerous Phase

The World Health Organization warned Friday that “the world is in a new and dangerous phase” as the global pandemic accelerates. The world recorded about 150,000 new cases on Thursday, the largest rise yet in a single day, according to the WHO. Nearly half of these infections were in the Americas, as new cases continue to surge in the United States, Brazil and across Latin America.

More than 8.5 million coronavirus cases and at least 454,000 deaths have been reported worldwide.

As confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb in the U.S., new mask requirements are prompting faceoffs between officials who seek to require face coverings and those, particularly conservatives, who oppose such measures. Several studies this month support wearing masks to curb coronavirus transmission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend their use as a protective measure.

Brazil is expected to exceed 1 million coronavirus cases Friday as the country continues to battle the world’s second-highest number of confirmed infections, after the United States.

Deaths officially related to covid-19 are also quickly approaching 50,000, Reuters reported. Brazil has averaged 1,000 deaths and 25,000 new cases per day in the past week.

Experts, however, caution that the real number of infections and fatalities due to the novel coronavirus is likely far higher.

“That number of 1 million is much less than the real number of people who have been infected, because there is underreporting of a magnitude of five to ten times,” Alexandre Naime Barbosa, a medical professor at the São Paulo State University, told Reuters. “The true number is probably at least 3 million and could even be as high as 10 million people.”

Elsewhere on the continent, Guatemala’s president replaced the country’s health minister on Friday amid pressure over his handling of the pandemic. Former health minister Hugo Monroy had faced accusations that he was not spending enough to contain the outbreak, the Associated Press reported. Doctors at public-health facilities have resorted to protests over allegedly unpaid salaries, while under-resourced hospitals have struggled to care for rising caseloads of patients, according to the AP.

Guatemala has reported roughly 11,800 cases and 450 deaths, according to a tracker maintained by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Peru, which this week overtook Italy as seventh in the world for confirmed cases, is likely heading toward its worst economic decline in a century, the country’s Central Bank reported Friday, according to Reuters. Peru has more than 240,000 confirmed cases — Latin America’s second highest — and has had over 7,000 covid-19 related deaths

 

Hotels are Investing in Air Filters and Sanitizers

Among the hotels most firmly doubling down on high-tech cleaning gadgets is the Carillon Miami Wellness Resort, whose apartment-like accommodations in South Beach, Fla., reopen July 1. The property is using a device called the Curis fogger, which vaguely resembles the Ghostbusters Proton Pack, to decontaminate air and hard surfaces with a hydrogen solution and spray hose. In the spa, a UV-C Sanitizer zaps 99.9% of bacteria on objects and surfaces.

Throughout public spaces, it’s also deploying hospital-grade electrostatic sprayers that are capable of decontaminating 18,000 square feet per hour. Likewise, 1950s Scottsdale, Ariz., icon Hotel Valley Ho has ordered three of the devices for its proper

These sprayers are also the main weapon of choice for the recently reopened, 4,029-room Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, where the typically buzzing lobby is now sterile as an operating room. Greeting guests and team members at each entry are security officers with temperature-taking thermal scanners. UV lights decontaminate shipments to the mailroom, receiving docks, and even bellhop carts. And around the first floor’s many dining and retail venues, you’ll spot almost a thousand physical distancing markers to encourage guests to space themselves apart in line. The hotel has branded its efforts as “Venetian Clean.”

Hotels such as the Venetian—which can have thousands of guests under one roof— are generally not designed for social distancing. But simple solutions can go a long way. In Amagansett, N.Y., guests can request to use the Roundtree’s Upang UV sterilizer machines at the hotel’s Main House and Breakfast Shed. Typically used to sterilize such items as baby bottles, they look like shrunken Smeg refrigerators that disinfect small objects, including cell phones and car keys, by exposing them to UV-C light for 10-minute cycles.

In many cases, independent hotels can be nimbler than big, bureaucratic brands because they don’t have to worry about scaling costs or approval processes for every proposed tweak. Still, some global hospitality companies have the advantage of existing technology on their side.

Yotel, for instance, is a tech-focused hotel brand with 14 locations from Singapore to San Francisco. It has used robots in the past to fulfill simple housekeeping requests. Now those Jetsons-inspired butlers are being deployed to deliver luggage to guest rooms, too, in order to eliminate an additional touchpoint.

Other hotels are investing in less-intrusive machines, including Molekule air purifiers, which claim to destroy up to 99.99% of SARS-CoV-2 proxy virus concentration in two hours. As of June 1, guests can find them in all rooms and suites at Rhode Island’s Ocean House and Weekapaug Inn.

Then there’s Asheville, N.C.’s Kimpton Hotel Arras, which is rewiring old technology—elevators—to whisk guests directly to their floor without stopping to pick up others along the way.

Restaurants account for roughly 25% of a hotel’s total revenue, according to real estate investment firm CBRE. To operate dining rooms safely, many properties are turning to reduced capacities: At the Inn at Little Washington, outside the nation’s capital, every other table at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant is populated by mannequins.

But for a majority of hotels and travelers, dining will boil down to a new form of room service in which food carts are left outside guest rooms and retrieved by the customers, rather than being brought inside and unveiled by staff. At Nayara, a resort in Costa Rica’s Arenal Volcano National Park, the golf carts used for room service deliveries are fully sanitized before each contact-less drop-off.

Others are going further in the need to eliminate as many touch points as possible when serving food. Before Covid-19, the Peninsula Hotels led the way with digital in-room systems that let you control your room’s temperature, lights, or order slices of cheesecake at 2 a.m. with the tap of an iPad button. Now the company is moving those services onto guests’ phones with PenChat, a 24/7 e-concierge service accessible via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat.

At Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, the pandemic has sped up projects already in the works. Its new Four Seasons App, now available across the 116 hotels, recently debuted with text-based conversations with staffers (not bots) in more than 100 languages. It also puts any piece of information normally printed on paper—spa services, local activities, menus, and more—into guests’ palms, digitally.

At Marriott, menus have been made available in the Bonvoy app at 230 of the company’s 7,300 hotels across 30 hotel brands—Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Editions, and W Hotels among them. According to John Wolf, the company’s vice president of global communications, Marriott is also following guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization by deploying hospital-grade disinfectants for high-touch surface areas (including TV remotes, door handles, and bathroom surfaces), placing disinfecting wipes in guest rooms, and providing personal protection equipment (PPE) at every level. The timeline for all this, Wolf says, is “over the next few months.”

For independent hotels, QR Codes are an easy alternative to developing an app: At the Wauwinet resort in Nantucket, Mass., guests can use them to pull up the menu and order from Topper’s, the on-site seafood restaurant.

While some travelers have adopted a wait-and-see philosophy before booking post-pandemic trips, others are sufficiently drawn by the promise of new technology and stricter protocols.

Ireland’s Dromoland Castle also has loyalists ready to return. The retreat reopens on July 3rd with socially distanced dining and PPE for both staff and guests, which has longtime guests such as Payne plotting a jaunt there later this summer. “The castle recently emailed us with their updated safety protocols, and we suddenly felt like it would be OK to book a trip,” Payne says.

Air Conditioning in the South will Present a Real Problem

Whereas people are outside in the North they are in air conditioned spaces in Arizona.  This is what Tree Hugger has labeled a ‘nightmare scenario”

The Federation of European Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Associations (REHVA) in Europe had warned that the coronavirus could stay airborne for some time, and travel long distances. Architect Justin Bere noted that "it recommends avoiding central recirculation during SARS CoV-2 episodes and closing the recirculation dampers, even if there are return air filters. As the REHVA guidance says, these don’t normally filter out viruses." Bere explained:

Recent research indicates that large droplets from sneezing can travel much further than 2 meters, even if there are no air movements. Small particles (<5 microns), generated by coughing and sneezing, may stay airborne for hours according to the REHVA guidance and can travel long distances. A Coronavirus particle is only 0.8 to 0.16 microns diameter so there could be many virus particles in a 5-micron droplet floating around in the air.

They have been studying the problem in Canada too. Professor Brian Fleck told the National Post that "this has been on people’s radar for quite a while. Somebody on a different floor sneezes ...The particle can stay airborne long enough to go all the way through the system and then pop out in somebody else’s office."

There are various ways that the risk can be lessened, including use of filters that catch a greater number of those particles, and drawing more fresh air into a system... But each of those changes carries a cost. Adding more fresh air can require additional heat or air conditioning. Heavier filters means more energy is needed to push the air through them.

But it doesn't get as hot in Canada as it does in Arizona. Engineer and Professor Ted Kesik told TreeHugger that "we shall be greatly challenged retrofitting our existing buildings to eliminate dilution ventilation systems." This is especially a challenge in the heat of a southern summer, where the difference between inside and outside air can be 40°F in Arizona or Texas. In the Southeast, there is also a lot of humidity with the heat. That's why the air is recirculated; the amount of energy needed to condition a mall's worth of outside air would be ridiculously high.

ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, had a look at the issue of the coronavirus and issued a statement in late April:

Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through the air is sufficiently likely that airborne exposure to the virus should be controlled. Changes to building operations, including the operation of heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems, can reduce airborne exposures.

They issued technical guidelines in a position document on infectious aerosols:

Infectious aerosols can be disseminated through buildings by pathways that include air distribution systems and interzone airflows. Various strategies have been found to be effective at controlling transmission, including optimized airflow patterns, directional airflow, zone pressurization, dilution ventilation, in-room air-cleaning systems, general exhaust ventilation, personalized ventilation, local exhaust ventilation at the source, central system filtration, UVGI, and controlling indoor temperature and relative humidity. Design engineers can make an essential contribution to reducing infectious aerosol transmission through the application of these strategies.

That's fine, the engineers know what to do with new buildings. But what about existing ones? Here, they make some recommendations, 

Non-healthcare buildings should have a plan for an emergency response. The following modifications to building HVAC system operation should be considered:

• Increase outdoor air ventilation (disable demand-controlled ventilation and open outdoor air dampers to 100% as indoor and outdoor conditions permit).  • Improve central air and other HVAC filtration to MERV-13 (ASHRAE 2017b) or the highest level achievable.  • Keep systems running longer hours (24/7 if possible.
• Add portable room air cleaners with HEPA or high-MERV filters with due consideration to the clean air delivery rate (AHAM 2015).
• Add duct- or air-handling-unit-mounted, upper room, and/or portable UVGI devices in connection to in-room fans in high-density spaces such as waiting rooms, prisons, and shelters.  • Maintain temperature and humidity as applicable to the infectious aerosol of concern.  • Bypass energy recovery ventilation systems that leak potentially contaminated exhaust air back into the outdoor air supply. 

In summary a building in Arizona will be well served to install efficient and robust air filtering systems rather than try to bring in lots of outside air.