In the fight against the dreadful COVID-19 outbreak worldwide, surgical-grade masks are such a commodity right now.
Demand for surgical-grade masks is soaring
The World Health Organization already declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic. With the scarcity of health care personnel, Personal Protective Equipments, Facilities, and surgical-grade masks, the whole world is having a hard time fighting off the virus.
Health care practitioners who risk their health and life to treat patients of COVID-19 are getting more vulnerable with the lack of proper protective equipment to fend off contamination from the virus.
Surgical-grade masks are essential at times like this since the virus is transmitted via bodily fluids that can be transmitted through coughing and sneezing most of the time. Since there is a lack of supply of these masks, Spiez Lab, a company in Zurich Switzerland, is trying to salvage about to expire face masks that are still up to quality for human use.
Andreas Bucher from Spiez Lab mentioned about the company clearing around 10.2 million masks for human usage. The rechecking of these masks for quality assurance is a big help right now, especially that supplier globally cannot provide the international demand due to high demand also on their localities.
Companies shifting to mask production
Spiez Lab is a Swiss institute for the protection of the population against nuclear, biological, and chemical threats and dangers. Yet, here they are helping the Swiss government test for expired surgical-grade masks that are still functional.
Many similar stories of companies worldwide that recoursed their production line to help create additional masks to be used by ordinary citizens to get them protected from contamination.
- Zettl Automotive of Germany, a known supplier of seat covers for luxury cars like BMW
- Prada in Europe, a known product line for bags and women’s accessories
- Styx, a popular brand for undergarments in the Czech Republic
The efforts from these companies in producing additional masks can help ordinary citizens get protection from virus transmission. Since these manufacturers are not medically certified, their products are not advised for use on health care personnel dealing first hand with COVID-19 patients. But, for the daily personal use of normal citizens as an extra line of protection from contamination, it is a perfect fit.
Medically certified manufacturers of surgical-grade masks worldwide are already quadrupling their production just to meet the needs of health workers in the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.
Featured image by Bangkok Post
