Efficacy of moist heat decontamination against various pathogens for the reuse of N95 respirators in the COVID-19 emergency
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Abstract
Decontamination of N95 respirators has become critical to alleviate PPE shortages for healthcare workers in the current COVID-19 emergency. The factors that are considered for the effective reuse of these masks are the fit, filter efficiency and decontamination/disinfection level both for SARS-CoV2, which is the causative virus for COVID-19, and for other organisms of concern in the hospital environment such as Staphylococcus aureus or Clostridium difficile.
The efficacy of inactivation or eradication against various pathogens should be evaluated thoroughly to understand the level of afforded disinfection. Methods commonly used in the sterilization of medical devices such as ionizing radiation, vaporized hydrogen peroxide, and ethylene oxide can provide a high level of disinfection, defined as a 6 log 10 reduction, against bacterial spores, considered the most resistant microorganisms. CDC guidance on the decontamination and reuse of N95s also includes the use of moist heat (60°C, 80% relative humidity, 15-30 min) as a possible recommendation based on literature showing preservation of fit efficiency and inactivation of H1N1 on spiked masks.
Here, we explored the efficacy of using moist heat under these conditions as a decontamination method for an N95 respirator (3M 1860S, St. Paul, MN) against various pathogens with different resistance; enveloped RNA viruses, Gram (+/-) bacteria, and non-enveloped viruses.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.13.20100651: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains Sentences Resources A single colony of P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii were grown in LB Lenox medium and incubated in 37°C under 200 rpm orbital shaking overnight (∼ 16 hours) in glass tubes (VWR). P. aeruginosasuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques …SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.13.20100651: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains Sentences Resources A single colony of P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii were grown in LB Lenox medium and incubated in 37°C under 200 rpm orbital shaking overnight (∼ 16 hours) in glass tubes (VWR). P. aeruginosasuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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