Since COVID-19 spread across the world and the United States, there has been a drastic increase in the usage of Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, within hospitals. As a result, hospitals deal with equipment shortages, which is not only detrimental to the patients, but to healthcare workers, their families, and other civilians as well. In America, with the number of cases climbing higher each day, healthcare workers are once again facing a shortage of protective gear according to an Washington Post article last week. Many citizens place the blame on the Trump administration, who has simply insisted that the state and local officials should be controlling the influx of equipment. The article also mentions that many workers “are almost all asked to reuse masks designed for single use,” causing many hospitals to close their offices, harming both those who wish to be tested and those infected who now find it difficult to seek treatment.
To combat this issue, health organizations have been determining ways to optimize the usage of PPE and create reusable PPE.To monitor PPE usage, the CDC developed a PPE Burn Rate Calculator, which allows hospitals to enter the number of boxes they receive for each type of PPE equipment and the number of patients and calculates the average consumption rate. With that information, health care professionals will be able to monitor usage much more closely and know when to resort to drastic measures, such as purchasing respirators nationally. But, there is one prospect that people have been researching for several months: reusable PPE.
According to an article by Modern Healthcare this month, NASA and the University Hospitals in Cleveland have collaborated on determining methods “to decontaminate personal protective equipment (PPE) for applications in aerospace and medicine to safeguard the health of workers caring for patients with COVID-19” using atomic oxygen and peracetic acid. Within their research, they discovered that oxygen atoms “can remove organic materials that can’t be easily cleaned by other methods,” which would kill the viruses lingering on the PPE. There is the other alternative, peracetic acid, which “has been proven to work for five cycles of decontamination.” Although these methods have not been fully implemented as of late, they have been shown to have promising results. This would stifle the growing need for hospitals to replenish their PPE supplies, helping ensure hospital safety.
As America struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of PPE has never been greater. If hospitals use the burn rate calculator and implement the newly discovered cleaning methods to make PPE reusable, healthcare workers may be better equipped to keep both patients, their friends and family, and themselves safe from COVID-19.
References
Business, Crain's Cleveland. “NASA, University Hospitals Develop New Decontamination Methods for PPE.” Modern Healthcare, 1 July 2020, www.modernhealthcare.com/safety-quality/nasa-university-hospitals-develop-new-decontamination-methods-ppe.
“COVID-19: Strategies for Optimizing the Supply of PPE.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 July 2020, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/index.html.
Wan, William. “America Is Running Short on Masks, Gowns and Gloves. Again.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 9 July 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/08/ppe-shortage-masks-gloves-gowns/.
Written by Keya Mann
Edited by Lucy Ge
Graphics by Karis Kelly
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