PPE decontamination to overcome PPE shortage in rural area during pandemic
Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Abstract
Despite remarkable developments in healthcare, the world was not ready to stop the spread of the novel COVID-19 pandemic almost a century after the great influenza pandemic. The explosive increase in the number of patients stalled the healthcare system, and the first and apparent issue was the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE). Our group established a system using a hydrogen peroxide vaporization method to decontaminate and reuse N95 respirators for healthcare workers. The system decontaminated over 12,000 units of PPE to cover institutions in West Texas. This service provided support at the most needed time during the pandemic.
Description
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Healthcare Infection Society. This is an open access article
under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords
COVID-19, Personal Protective Equipment, N95 Respirator, Hydrogen Peroxide Vaporization
Citation
Kharbat, A., Abla, H., Alkul, M., Kile, R., White, J., Webb, C. R., Presley, S. M., & Kang, M. H. (2021). PPE decontamination to overcome PPE shortage in rural area during pandemic. Infection Prevention in Practice, 3(3), 100145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infpip.2021.100145