NXTNano can Ramp Up to Meet Future Demand Quickly

Hydrogen Peroxide Used by Meat Processors and Other Food Processors

Public-Private Partnership in Michigan Detecting COVID through Sewage

Face Mask Better than a Vaccine

Face Masks May Limit the Severity of the Virus

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NXTNano can Ramp Up to Meet Future Demand Quickly

Our thesis is that there will be a big market for high efficiency media. Reluctance to invest in new media lines could be a major problem in mitigating COVID. So we are doing a series of interviews with suppliers to determine

1.      How fast can they ramp up production of high efficiency media?

2.      How flexible is a line to make mask, HVAC, microfiltration, or other media?

3.      How much time does it take to change a line over to make a different product?

Yesterday we talked to Andy McDowell, director sales and marketing at NXTNano of Nano.  In the Alert yesterday we covered their mask making activities and also the extent of the use of their media for gas turbine intake filters, HVAC, masks and microfiltration.

Andy gave some very useful answers to our questions

Bob:  Andy how long does it take to build a new line?

Andy:  Only 3 to 4 months and since we have to install humidity control and other basic services it is even easier to install multiple lines rather than just one.

Bob:  Can you give us some idea of the production of one line?

Andy:  If we are making masks and working 24-7 it is 86,000 m2/day.  If we are making HVAC media it is about 30% more.

Bob:  How many masks can be produced per m2?

Andy: About 40 surgical grade masks or 30 N95 grade masks.

Bob:  How many HVAC filters can be produced  per m2?

Andy:  It varies but a rule of thumb would be 1 filter/m2.

Bob:  How much time does it take to change over from one product to another?

Andy:   We can make the change from one product to another in a matter of minutes not hours.

Bob:  We  see a big opportunity for the filtration industry to take a positive rather than negative attitude and say we can  invest in the production equipment necessary to see that everyone can be protected by wearing high efficiency masks and spending time in space that is filtered to remove viruses.  Do you think your company is capable of making major expansions?

Andy:  We just expanded capacity and do not see  major obstacles in expanding as warranted.

Let’s take some of the numbers Andy gave us and see what would be needed to produce at the level of Taiwan which is 0.8  meltblown masks per day per person.  Why shouldn’t the U.S. be as large a producer on a per capita basis.  Right now it is about 0.1.  So the U.S. would have to produce eight times as much media as it does today.

For each line the production per day would  be 86,000 x 40 = 3.44 million.  The U.S. population is 330 million. To reach 0.8 masks per day per person we would need to produce media for 264 million masks. Assuming we are producing media for 33 million masks per day now we have to increase production by 231 million masks per day. This would require 67 new lines.

The next question is what will be the market requirements for other efficient media.  The world revenue forecast we published a few days ago is helpful and is shown below. NXTNano is already supplying media for the gas turbine inlet filter market. 

Let’s assume that the U.S. will produce 20% of the world requirements.

There is a trend toward increased efficiency which has proven to reduce turbine maintenance.  The nonwoven filter revenues for the entire rotating segment are less than 10% of those for masks.  But media represents  two times the value.  So the total number of lines will be roughly 20% of those for masks. 

 

However, the number of new lines will be small since the growth requirements are low. 

There are very few MERV 16 or HEPA filters in HVAC systems.  So most of the revenues will come from  new lines rather than existing. The media is a higher percent of the finished product than in masks. So roughly there would be 40 new lines required.

 

Local air systems will have mostly HEPA grade filters as will transport. Fabric filters will use nanofiber technology. In fact Donaldson has been a pioneer in the area but the new needs are likely to be just the equivalent of 1 or 2 lines.

So what protection does a media manufacturer have if  the mask market is negatively impacted by a vaccine or other COVID solution. With wildfires, air pollution, indoor air pollution, flu and other potential viruses a drop equivalent to more than 30 lines seems highly unlikely. This would only be a 20% drop in total capacity and therefore not catastrophic for suppliers.

 

Hydrogen Peroxide Used by Meat Processors and Other Food Processors

Smithfield Foods thought it was doing great. In the first quarter of this year, the pork giant’s earnings were up 190% over the same period in 2019. Then the pandemic hit, and the close quarters of meatpacking plants made them ideal places for the coronavirus to spread.

Employee infection rates spiked, forcing temporary closures and sudden shortages in supermarket meat aisles. After its revenue plummeted in the second quarter, Smithfield and other meat processors started looking around for strategies to make sure the same thing didn’t happen again.

While the industry has in some cases installed plastic shields between workstations and made other coronavirus-related changes, some executives contend social distancing isn’t feasible in such a labor-intensive environment. Smithfield, the largest pork company in the world with 42,000 employees in 40 U.S. locations, decided to invest in some relatively new technology to deal with the threat of contagion. this was reported by Bloomberg in an article linked below.

Howard Anderson, the company’s chief engineer, said he reviewed a range of novel approaches, but is most hopeful when it comes to ionized hydrogen peroxide vapor-and a machine to spread it built by Dayton, Ohio-based Extreme Microbial Technologies (EMT).

“What we liked about [EMT] is that it’s a proactive solution,” said Anderson. Many other options are passive, requiring that air be pulled through a unit to be treated. Smithfield, owned by Hong Kong-based WH Group, said it has installed EMT’s units in six locations, including a plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with three more locations soon to follow.

According to data collected by Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN), some 42,567 meatpacking workers have tested positive for covid-19 and 203 have died.

In the spring, the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls became the number one virus hotspot in America, with a cluster of 644 confirmed cases among employees and people they were in contact with. In May, 76 workers at the largest of the Smithfield Foods plants in Tar Heel, North Carolina, became infected, according to local health officials.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency responsible for the safety of workers, recently fined Smithfield $13,494. The company is fighting the penalty. Smithfield declined to comment on how many of its employees have been infected or died in the pandemic.

EMT, which was started in 2016, contends its technology is an environmentally safe way to help reduce coronavirus in the workplace. But experts say it’s a long way from being able to clear pathogens from the air.

The backbone of EMT’s technology is a “coated honeycomb matrix” that, when hit by ultraviolet light, pulls moisture from the air and forms hydrogen peroxide. Particles are pushed out of the machine, spreading through a room and landing on surfaces. According to EMT, when the particles come into contact with pathogens, a chemical reaction neutralizes them.

The company makes standalone units for office spaces (which are the size of a waste-paper basket) or uses a building’s heating and cooling (HVAC) system for bigger areas.

According to the Trump administration, hydrogen peroxide is active against a wide range of microorganisms, including bacteria, yeasts, fungi, viruses and spores. But at high concentrations, the molecule can be harmful to humans. EMT contends the limited amount of vapor produced by its machines makes them safe for humans as well as food production.

“This technology would not work fast enough, nor penetrate a droplet traveling through the air in time to inactivate it before hitting a person’s face.”

In a study done by the University of Florida in August, ionized hydrogen peroxide was found to be 99.7% successful at reducing microbial contamination levels of the coronavirus on stainless steel surfaces. But the technology is only a first step toward total indoor protection, since most coronavirus transmission is believed to take place through airborne droplets.

“Surfaces are responsible for maybe 5% of all transmissions. Likely much lower,” said Dr. Erin Bromage, an associate professor at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and an infectious disease expert. “This technology would not work fast enough, nor penetrate a droplet traveling through the air in time to inactivate it before hitting a person’s face.”

Still, EMT’s tech has been shown to work against a long list of contaminants that food companies were already worried about, including E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria and the norovirus.

Dr. David Acheson, a food safety expert and former official with the Food and Drug Administration, said that if a vapor mechanism can kill the norovirus, it can kill the coronavirus. The FDA granted an Emergency Use Authorization for vaporized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate N95 respirators, a process used by 6,300 hospitals across the U.S.

“It’s a reasonable assumption that it will work on surfaces,” Acheson said. “But any evidence that it will prevent person-to-person transmission [is] a big question mark,”

This technology would not work fast enough, nor penetrate a droplet traveling through the air in time to inactivate it before hitting a person’s face.”

Despite the questions, industry analysts are cautiously optimistic about the technology.

“Let’s say we get a vaccine tomorrow that everyone wants to take, I think that as these investments move forward, it’s about future proofing [a building],” said John Walsh, an industry analyst at Credit Suisse. “It’s a way that buildings are going to help distinguish themselves to get people back into [office] spaces.”

But for Nick Santhanam, a senior partner at McKinsey & Co., whether companies like EMT keep growing after the Covid-19 pandemic recedes remains an “open question.”

“People are thinking about it, and clients are asking about it. You’re going to see a massive surge [in adoptions],” Santhanam said. “But will it keep going? That’s tbd.”

Randy Mount, 51, chief executive of EMT, began his career in real estate remediation, eradicating contaminants like mold from residential homes. That was how he stumbled upon the use of vaporized hydrogen peroxide. “We could decontaminate anything,” said Mount. “Restaurants, homes, universities and schools-we started getting a reputation for being the guys to call.”

In addition to Smithfield, his client list now includes French-owned Bonduelle Fresh Americas, which he said installed units in one of its four U.S. locations; sausage maker Glier’s Goetta, which has six units in its Covington, Kentucky, production facility; and Graeter’s Ice Cream, a 1,500 employee-company that has installed seven machines in its production facility in Mt. Auburn, Ohio.

EMT installation costs are calculated by cubic feet and bio-load (the number or range of microorganisms in a facility). A machine for a typical food production facility of 5,000 square feet with 12-foot ceilings would cost about $11,000. Mount said the company is on track to make $10 million in sales this year.

The technology EMT uses isn’t new, however. Vapor purification, or “nonthermal plasma,” was patented in 2014 by San Diego-based Puradigm. While some businesses began taking steps to address airborne threats long ago, most didn’t see the benefit, given the expense. The pandemic has changed that, creating a huge opportunity for businesses already in the field as more food-processing and food retail look for help.

Padraig Lawlor, Puradigm’s chief operating officer, estimated his company’s 2020 sales will be $17 million. But next year, the projection is $72 million, Lawlor said, adding that he’s mulling an IPO for 2022.

One retailer that put such precautions in place was Chipotle Mexican Grill, a restaurant chain which grappled with norovirus outbreaks in 2015 and 2017.

In between those years, the company installed combination ultraviolet/vapor hydrogen peroxide systems built by RGF Environmental Group Inc. In 2018, Chipotle added separate restroom units to “address microbiological contaminants, including viruses that originate there,” wrote Kerry Bridges, Chipotle’s vice president of food safety, in an email.

The air-purification systems sold by RGF are similar to what Puradigm and EMT sell, said Dr. James Marsden, RGF’s executive director of science and technology. Marsden was a professor at Kansas State University and led Chipotle’s food safety group after the norovirus outbreak.

Florida-based RGF said its sales grew by 500% this year, and that it’s currently testing its product’s effectiveness against the coronavirus.

At Chef’s Garden’s, a 350-acre vegetable farm in Huron, Ohio, that sells to high-end restaurants, business vanished when Covid-19 arrived. As the company pivoted to direct-to-consumer sales, Chief Executive Officer Bob Jones, Jr. looked for ways to protect his 140 employees. He installed EMT units in April, both to keep staff healthy and “protect the integrity of the product,” he said.

Mike Willing, chief executive officer of Aloha Seafood in San Francisco, said his company’s biggest problem before the coronavirus was that when someone got the flu, it would spread like wildfire through the staff. In 2019, he installed machines from EMT. Since then, Willing said he hasn’t had a single case of the coronavirus to report. “We feel more comfortable with it and my guys are ecstatic,” he said.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/sep/18/startups-race-to-develop-techniques-to-clear-workp/

Public-Private Partnership in Michigan Detecting COVID through Sewage

Aquasight has launched a Sewage Surveillance Public-Private Partnership for Early Warning COVID-19 Detection for Communities, College Dorms, Nursing Homes and Correctional Facilities.

• Aquasight's CEWS is a full-service solution of sewage samplers, logistics, testing and a digital platform to track the presence of viruses in sewage using biomarkers, geographical insights, community level monitoring, heat maps, and dashboards which allows county officials to track the spread of infectious diseases for both asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals.
• Healthcare response teams to mobilize faster and resource planning will be started earlier to reduce PPE shortages and make sure area hospitals are prepared for higher caseloads. Government leaders can develop targeted business opening plans for greater economic stability.
• Michigan State University provides world class microbiology research expertise and standard testing protocols. Oakland University has a sewage testing facility to serve not only communities in Michigan but throughout the country.

"We believe this testing can be a critical addition to the toolbox for our community – and hopefully for many communities – as we continue to engage in contact tracing to limit the impact of the pandemic. My team has made this their number one priority, working with experts from public health, academia and other units of local government," said Honorable Candice S. Miller, Macomb County Public Works Commissioner.

"Part of our mission is to be good community partners and better the world through knowledge," said Dr. Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, Oakland University president. "As a physician-scientist, I also understand that if we can monitor infectious diseases through this process, it will give government officials and health care providers a big advantage in controlling the spread of disease."

"The state of Michigan is really leading the way in establishing advanced technology laboratories and these unique partnerships are essential as we advance our knowledge in the fight against this virus," Joan Rose, Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research at Michigan State University.

"We are the first company to have an industrial scale turnkey sewage surveillance program with actionable insights that can provide early warning on COVID-19. We operate at the  intersection of public health and wastewater agencies.  We are implementing at the wastewater treatment plant, community sewersheds, college dorms, nursing homes and correctional facilities. Our model is flexible to operate with any network of labs nationally," said Aquasight Founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani.


Face Mask Better than a Vaccine

The director of the CDC said a face mask may guarantee to protect against COVID-19 more than a vaccine. An Idaho medical expert says its more complicated than that.

“We have clear scientific evidence that they work, and they are our best defense. I may even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guarantee to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine,” said CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield.

It’s a strong statement about masks and their effectiveness to fight the coronavirus pandemic. However, is it accurate to say they work better than a vaccine at protecting people?

“I think he gave a very complicated message in a very short period of time and stated very simply, but it is far more complex,” said Dr. David Pate, a medical expert and a member of the Idaho coronavirus task force.

Pate said when he heard the mask versus vaccine soundbite from Dr. Redfield it certainly got his attention.

“At this time we don’t know how effective the vaccines are going to be. I’m certainly hopeful, I’m optimistic, but we don’t know how effective they are going to be,” Pate said.

The CDC announced this week that vaccines for coronavirus should be available to the general public by the third quarter of 2021. The announcement was celebrated as a major milestone, making Redfield’s comments confusing to many. 

“A mask, depending on the study, is somewhere between 65% and 85% effective,” Pate explained. ”I think his point is, look you have a mask now everybody can use that it is pretty effective. We don’t have the vaccine yet it’s going to be awhile still before we have enough vaccine and enough people vaccinated and we don’t know what the effectiveness is going to be.

Dr. Pate agrees that, of course, masks are a great tool to help battle the pandemic, but a vaccine is a huge step to moving out of a pandemic. But, even when a vaccine is available to everyone, masks will play a big role. 

“We think it’s going to take about six weeks since your first shot of the two until you really have your maximum full protection,” he explained.

So when will we be done with masks as an accessory to our daily lives?

“It’s really going to be when we drive the transmission down,” Pate said.

He added that that depends on things like the effectiveness of a vaccine and if enough people are able or willing to get a vaccine. Essentially, it needs to get to the point where the virus has nowhere to go.

While Dr. Redfield’s comment about mask protection versus a vaccine made a lot of headlines, Dr. Pate said it’s important to keep something in-mind through this pandemic.

“Sometimes the way people get in trouble is we try to make a nuanced argument in a soundbite and that just usually leads to more confusion,” Pate said.  

 

Face Masks May Limit the Severity of the Virus

Face masks may limit the severity of coronavirus cases, University of California San Francisco researchers said in a paper published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

It’s likely that face masks, by blocking even some of the virus-carrying droplets you inhale, can reduce your risk of falling seriously ill from COVID-19," Monica Gandhi, MD, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco, said in a university press release. “The more virus you get into your body, the [sicker] you are likely to get."

Based on the researchers’ epidemiological observations, Gandhi and her colleagues suggest in the paper that masks can lead to milder or asymptomatic infections by reducing the amount of virus people breathe in.

"Masks, depending on [the] type, filter out the majority of viral particles, but not all," the researchers stated in the published report.

The notion of viral dose or viral inoculum was incorporated with early smallpox vaccines in the 16th century in China where small amounts of the virus were injected into a healthy person to create a mild illness followed by immunity. It was also involved with the influenza A virus, where healthy volunteers who received a larger dose of the influenza A virus had symptoms that were more severe, the release said.

Severe illness rates are lower in countries such as Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea where the wearing of face masks was already socially acceptable, according to the release.

“We’re also saying that masks, which filter out a majority of viral particles, can lead to less severe infection if you do get one,” Gandhi stated in the press release. “If you get infected but have no symptoms – that’s the best way you can ever get a virus.”

The release noted a hamster study where a surgical mask separated cages of hamsters with COVID-19 and uninfected hamsters. The mask was found to decrease transmission of coronavirus, while the hamsters that had contracted SARS-CoV-2 developed milder symptoms, according to the report.

Gandhi said viral dose could be another factor regarding the prognosis of the virus based on two outbreaks of coronavirus on cruise ships, according to the release. The first outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 on the Diamond Princess outside of China 18% of the 634 passengers positive for COVID-19 were asymptomatic. In the other case, in March onboard an Argentinian cruise ship, 81% of the 128 people who tested positive were asymptomatic, according to the news release.

The major difference, according to Gandhi, was that passengers on the Argentinian ship were given surgical masks and staff N95 masks as soon as a passenger was detected to have COVID-19.

There were similar findings in food processing plants, per the researchers. Some 95% of 124 infected employees were asymptomatic in an Oregon seafood processing plant, while nearly 95% of 481 COVID-19-positive employees were asymptomatic in a Tyson chicken processing plant in Arkansas where masks were worn

Wearing face masks could result in less severe cases of COVID-19 which would put less of a burden on the health care system and possibly increase herd immunity as a potential vaccine is developed, Gandhi said in the release.