July 15, 2020
Enjoy these interesting stories from the scientific community.
*-- Engineers design reusable silicone rubber face mask with N95 filter --*
Researchers said Thursday that they have developed a resusable silicone rubber face mask with an N95 filter.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women's Hospital said in a statement that they think the new face mask is as effective at stopping viral particles as N95 masks.
The goal in developing and testing the new face mask is to meet the "dire need for personal protective equipment within healthcare settings during the COVID-19 pandemic," researchers said in the study, published Thursday in British Medical Journal Open.
Many hospitals have used hydrogen peroxide vapor to sterilize masks for reuse, but the process requires specialized equipment that is not available everywhere. And while the cleaning allows for up to 20 reuses, it can only be worn one day with every cleaning, researchers said.
The new masks have space for one or two N95 filters to be replaced after each use, and the rest of the rubber mask itself can be sterilized and reused many times.
"With this design, the filters can be popped in and then thrown away after use, and you're throwing away a lot less material than an N95 mask," Brigham and Women's Hospital research engineer Adam Wentworth, co-lead author of the study, said in a statement.
Researchers recruited 24 healthcare workers for the study to test the fit of the mask and found that it could successfully fit different face sizes.
Now, the research team is working on a second version of the mask with hopes to make it more comfortable and durable.
Going forward, they also expect to do more lab tests that measure the masks' ability to filter particles.
"We know that COVID-19 is really not going away until a vaccine is prevalent," said co-lead author James Byrne, a radiation oncologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and research affiliate at MIT. "I think there's always going to be a need for masks, whether it be in the health care setting or in the general public."
*-- Experts pitch surveillance system to detect viruses before next pandemic --*
 Scientific experts said Thursday that a wildlife surveillance system must be developed before the next pandemic emerges.
Evidence shows the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, came from bats that likely passed the virus onto another species before infecting humans, according to the World Health Organization.
Infectious disease experts, ecologists, wildlife biologists and other experts argue, in a paper published in the journal Science, that a decentralized global system of wildlife surveillance must be established before the next pandemic.
"It's impossible to know how often animal viruses spill over into the human population, but coronaviruses alone have caused outbreaks in people three times in the last 20 years," co-author Jennifer Philips said in a press release.
Phillips, who is an associate professor of medicine and co-director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was referring to outbreaks from the SARS, MERS and COVID-19 epidemics.
"Even a decade ago it would have been difficult to conduct worldwide surveillance at the human-wildlife interface," Philips continued. "But because of technological advances, it is now feasible and affordable, and it has never been more obvious how necessary it is."
Researchers said in the paper that expansion into wild areas for resources due to population growth has exacerbated the problem.
Wildlife animals caught for consumption, sold at wildlife markets as exotic pets or held in crowded or unsanitary conditions have also made spillover of viruses into human population more likely, the researchers say.
The surveillance system would monitor wildlife markets and other hotspots to identify whether a virus in animals could spread to humans by comparing genomic sequence data.
"There's now a genetic sequencer available that is literally the size of a USB stick," said co-author Gideon Erkenswick. "You could bring that and a few other supplies into a rainforest and analyze a sample for sequences associated with disease-causing viruses on site in a matter of hours.
"If you do chance upon something like the virus that causes COVID-19, do you really want to be collecting it, storing it, transporting it, risking further exposure, sample degradation, and adding months or years of delay, before you figure out what you've got?" Erkenswick said. "There are people with the expertise and skills to do this kind of work safely pretty much everywhere in the world, they just haven't been given the tools."
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