Volunteer Efforts Vet N95 Cleaning Methods

As the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic began making itself apparent to the healthcare industry, sterilization expert Amit Gupta began getting phone calls from concerned clinician friends. “I have a number of friends who are doctors who work in hospitals,” Gupta, the director of engineering at Billerica, MA-based Consolidated Sterilizer Systems, said. “And, as mask supply started entering the forefront of thoughts of healthcare workers, some of my friends started reaching out to me, asking if they could sterilize the masks. “I started researching it as 'Help a friend out' thing, then I realized it was more of a widespread problem and was becoming national news. So we decided as a company to spend a little more time and resources and develop it more into a resource people could leverage and read about.” As the magnitude of the shortage of N95 respirators became more widely known, Gupta said he and his colleagues decided to widen their effort to provide information on what worked and what didn't in sterilizing masks meant to be disposable beyond their own steam autoclave technology. The company's blog includes posts on several mask de-contamination methods and safety practices. “We decided to focus not just on steam sterilization, but all the different methodologies people might have available to them, and address it as a public safety FYI instead of an 'our technology' ...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Sterilization COVID-19 Source Type: news