FDA says to limit mask decontamination to 4 cycles

(Image courtesy of Brian McGowan on Unsplash)

Soon after healthcare workers began warning of personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, companies and other organizations started claiming their decontamination systems could reprocess used filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) such as N95s up to 20 times.

The FDA began issuing emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for FFR decontamination systems with a range of allowable cycles and major media organizations and nurses began to question the claims about the number of times an FFR could be safely decontaminated and reused. Companies, universities and other organizations gained EUAs for sterilizing masks up to 10 times (Sterilucent and Steris), and Stryker (up to two times), with a total of 13 organizations now holding 15 such EUAs.

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  • January 22, 2021
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How decontamination could solve the COVID-19 mask shortage problem

With cold and flu season rapidly approaching, public health officials worry about a resurgence of COVID-19 and personal protective equipment shortages. Protecting frontline workers will likely include decontaminating face masks.

(Image courtesy of Brian McGowan on Unsplash)

A spike in COVID-19 cases this fall and winter could leave healthcare facilities with renewed shortages of personal protective equipment — particularly masks.

Hundreds of frontline healthcare workers have died from the virus since the pandemic struck in China in 2019, bringing the need for effective face masks into sharp relief. But despite the efforts of 3M and other companies worldwide to boost production of the most effective filtering masks — N95s — there still might not be enough.

Get the full story on our sister site, Medical Design & Outsourcing.

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  • September 4, 2020
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