A typical surgical mask is designed as a physical barrier to block larger droplets and liquid spray. This means that surgical masks have a certain effect in reducing the probability of liquids spreading through airborne covid2019, whether they are infected (to prevent the virus from spreading from them) or uninfected (to avoid being infected).
However, medical masks are not very resistant to small particles, including some caused by aerosols caused by sneezing. You need an N95 mask.
A typical surgical mask is designed as a physical barrier to block larger droplets and liquid spray. This means that surgical masks have a certain effect in reducing the probability of liquid covid2019 spreading through the air, whether it is an infected person (to control the spread of the virus) or an uninfected person (to avoid infection).
However, medical masks are not very resistant to small particles, including some caused by aerosols caused by sneezing. You need an N95 mask.
Either way, the mask is ideally used for a single session, and then it should be discarded.
Currently, the Center for Disease Control (cdc) does not recommend that citizens use N95 or surgical masks every day. However, the Chinese government has recommended the use of surgical masks. If the disease becomes common enough in the United States, the CDC may eventually give the same recommendation.
However, for "civilian", surgical masks are meaningful, not N95. This is because the latter are uncomfortable, and the supply is more limited, and the degree of protection they provide is most suitable for medical personnel who work closely with infected patients.
I remember when I started my two-year service with the China Peace Corps, I was given a N95 mask. In the next two years, all volunteers were required to wear masks to prevent an outbreak similar to the SARS virus in 2003, which led to the evacuation of all Chinese volunteers at that time. If this happens again, we are told that we should wear masks and have been wearing masks throughout the evacuation.
Because N95 masks can only be used for one course of treatment, and once removed, they are considered to be unsafe. Ideally, doctors treating a large number of covid2019 patients will use dozens of masks within 100 days. Multiplied by the number of doctors required to treat this disease, experts believe that this disease may infect more than half of the US population, and you need billions of masks.
Specifically, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services estimated at 3.5 billion people at the March 3 congressional hearing.
Unfortunately, in the United States National Strategic Reserve established by the Clinton Administration in 1999, far fewer vaccines are available. The purpose of the reserve is to provide a 12-hour medical response to fatal terrorist attacks against weapons of mass destruction. SNS only has 12 million medical N95 masks and 30 million medical masks.
This is actually only a small part of the previous reserve size, because SNS distributed 85 million n95 in 2009 to help control the swine flu epidemic.
SNS has about 200 employees and many secret warehouses across the country. So far, it has released a part to cope with the popularity of COVID-19.
The Pentagon donated 5 million N95 masks, and the US Department of Health and Human Services ordered 500 million N95 masks, hoping to increase production in the next 18 months. But these obviously can only meet part of the demand.
As a result, the hospital's n95 has been sold out and can no longer be purchased because they are already sold out. A small number of stocks circulating in the private market have gained value due to fraud. As a result, doctors and nurses are increasingly using disposable masks or taking shortcuts for consecutive days. This reached its peak in the United States well before 2019.
N95 masks usually have a 5-year shelf life, and SNS has more than 5 million expired N95 masks. However, in view of the growing demand for masks, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided that several masks should continue to be effective, even though the "use period" has been exceeded. This is a grim signal that indicates the severity of the shortage.
Even more worrying is that the guidelines of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe that the use of medical masks is an "acceptable alternative" rather than n95, because "the supply chain of respirators cannot meet demand." Just a few weeks ago, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that it "opposes any measures that fail to provide optimal protection and infection control standards." Now, it believes that N95s should be used for high-risk transmission procedures such as intubation.
To be fair, the Journal of the American Medical Association conducted a sample survey of 2,862 medical staff in 2019 and found that the spread of influenza between medical staff protected by n95 and medical staff protected by medical masks There was no statistically significant difference in rates. Whether this situation also applies to the more contagious 2019 2019 is unclear.
Another problem is that China accounts for 50% of the global mask production. Since the outbreak in Wuhan, by March this year, China's mask production has increased 20-fold to 200 million per day. Even the automobile and iPhone factories have been transformed into factories that produce masks, although China faces material bottlenecks in the availability of meltblown fabrics. However, the micron fiber material used by n95 limits production to 600,000 vehicles per day.
Unfortunately (although understandably), China keeps most of its masks for domestic treatment in 2019, which means that too few masks are exported. However, Beijing has donated millions of surgical masks to Iran, Italy, the Philippines and South Korea, and exported more than 100,000 N95 masks to Italy. maskwholesales
France also requires all masks to be produced for domestic use until May. The Czech Republic, Germany and Italy are taking similar measures.
Unfortunately, the US government failed to take sufficient action to start building reserves within two months of the outbreak in Wuhan
Finally, Congress voted to relax legal responsibilities to promote the production of hundreds of millions of masks, including certification of medical masks commonly used for industrial purposes. This will result in an increase of hundreds of millions of masks in the country each year, but it will not reach the billions needed, and of course will not reach the level of a possible surge in infections in the short term.