Community-Based Production of Quality Face Masks for Personal Protection During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The authors developed a process to produce a reliably fitting face mask from materials that were immediately available to health care workers, to reduce the risk of infection. Multiple materials and designs were developed to produce face masks that focused on ease of production, the ability to generate a reliable facial seal, and the ability to tailor the mask for those who did not fit commercially available N95 masks. Two final designs were selected. Mask components were assembled into kits and distributed to community sewists. Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles were developed for quality improvement. A process was successfully developed to produce 5000 face masks in a period of 3 weeks that fit almost all (95%) health care workers who did not fit in a commercially available mask. The process was able to produce quality face masks with specific attention paid to developing masks that would pass qualitative fit testing.

Physical and technological analysis of the AlGaN-based UVC-LED: an extended discussion focused on cubic phase as an alternative for surface disinfection.

“…At this point, also the World Health Organization (WHO) published recommendations about what barriers and personal protection equipment were useful to diminish the number of deaths and seriously ills [11]. These recommendations provoked the facemask and respirators market into an increment from USD 1.03 billion (before the outbreak) to more than USD 2.5 billion at the end of 2020, reaching up to USD 2.8 billion in 2026, depending on the pandemic evolution [12], and the overprices that, in some cases, have reached a factor of five [13]. As a consequence, both the production and the pollution related to these have increased up to more than 20 times from February to June 2020 [14].…”