921
COVID-19 / Re: Why can't we re-use PPE?
« on: 30/04/2020 19:35:16 »
By the time you have resterilised a latex glove, both inside and outside, it's pretty useless as a glove, even if it isn't torn or punctured. Likewise single-use aprons: very difficult to sterilise with ethylene oxide, not washable, and distorted to uselessness by steam. You might collect them, remove the blood and gunk (by hand!) and sterilise in bulk with a cobalt irradiator, but the machines are expensive and pretty well full of urgent items like syringes, and if you knowingly begin with infected material, you can't rely on batch sampling to assure product sterility - you have to test every one!
The point of a HEPA filter respirator is to trap infectious droplets. So if you have a washable (plastic) matrix, you end up with a large volume of infected water and a wet filter with a few viruses. So you dry the filter with moving air and disperse virus (a) into the public water system and (b) into the factory air. Bag, bin and burn, please.
Cloth gowns can be laundered but they are surprisingly fragile and have a hard life in the ward or theatre, so they need to be inspected before repacking to make sure there are no gaping holes or missing tapes - all very labor-intensive in an expensive sterile area, so may not be first choice, and in the case of high infectivity, at some point you will have a bin full of evil to store in the ward then move along a public corridor and unpack in the laundry. Bag, bin and burn paper if you want to save lives.
Hospitals do clean and re-use crutches but most are stolen or at least forgotten because the discharged patients don't know how to return them! Crutch hunting and wheelchair tracking is a major activity of the Red Cross!
The point of a HEPA filter respirator is to trap infectious droplets. So if you have a washable (plastic) matrix, you end up with a large volume of infected water and a wet filter with a few viruses. So you dry the filter with moving air and disperse virus (a) into the public water system and (b) into the factory air. Bag, bin and burn, please.
Cloth gowns can be laundered but they are surprisingly fragile and have a hard life in the ward or theatre, so they need to be inspected before repacking to make sure there are no gaping holes or missing tapes - all very labor-intensive in an expensive sterile area, so may not be first choice, and in the case of high infectivity, at some point you will have a bin full of evil to store in the ward then move along a public corridor and unpack in the laundry. Bag, bin and burn paper if you want to save lives.
Hospitals do clean and re-use crutches but most are stolen or at least forgotten because the discharged patients don't know how to return them! Crutch hunting and wheelchair tracking is a major activity of the Red Cross!
The following users thanked this post: chris