Federal Guidelines and Current
Hospital Technology
BREATHE
(Better Respiratory Technology Using Advanced Technologies for Healthcare Employees)
Since 2009, providing better respiratory equipment using advanced technologies for healthcare employees has been a priority of the federal government. The BREATHE federal government interagency effort provides consensus recommendations that aim to improve respiratory protective equipment used by healthcare workers. The interagency effort represents nine federal departments and agencies including pandemic and emergency preparedness, infectious disease medicine and epidemiology, respirator and personal protective equipment policy and regulation, occupational and environmental medicine, respirator and materials science, infection control, respirator physiology and physics and bio-security. However, the 2020 pandemic has overwhelmed hospitals and revealed a large gap in preparedness.
Existing PPE and Infection Risk
The high performance portable masks and respirators currently used (i.e., N95, KN95, FFP2) only partially protect health care workers. Although vaccines provide additional protection, viruses continually mutate, posing new challenges for testing and vaccine effectiveness.
Current respirators use electret filters that filter at least 95% of particles larger than 0.3 microns. Viruses smaller than .3 microns (SARS-COV-2 virus ranges between 0.016 and 0.14 microns) pass unfiltered, and when the environment is highly contaminated and exposure is prolonged, these small virus loads accumulate in the body triggering infection. Reducing the space between the filter fibers to retain finer particles restricts the airflow, requiring the use of a bulky air pump (reducing portability) and may only increase efficiency up to 99.97%.