The researchers have created an affordable, reusable version of an N95 mask that could help healthcare professionals, as fears reappear from the shortage of personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.
The group of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, created a prototype of the mask and found that it also worked in a laboratory to filter out viral particles like conventional N95 masks.
“One of the key things that we recognized early on was that to help meet demand, we really needed to restrict ourselves to methods that could scale,” said Giovanni Traverso, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and gastroenterologist at MIT in Brigham. Women’s Hospital, in a statement. “We also wanted to maximize system reuse, and we wanted systems that could be sterilized in many different ways.”
This image shows the mask on the head of a mannequin. (Credit: Researchers, MIT)
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Known as injection moldable, autoclavable, scalable, conformable, or iMASC, the mask is made of silicone and has room for one or two N95 filters, but uses less N95 material than a traditional mask. The N95 material can be easily exchanged for more N95 material and the mask can be sterilized for reuse.
They can be sterilized in different ways, either through a steam sterilizer, by placing the masks in an oven or by soaking them in a mixture of chlorine and alcohol, the statement added.
A group of about 20 healthcare workers tested the masks and found that they were comfortable and fit.
Investigators are working on a second version of the mask, using comments from health workers as the pandemic continues.
“We know that Covid will not really go away until a vaccine prevails,” added one of the study’s authors, James Byrne. “I think there will always be a need for masks, either in the healthcare setting or in the general public.”
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As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 14.9 million cases of coronaviruses have been diagnosed worldwide, of which more than 3.9 million are in the United States, the most affected country on the planet.
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