Coronavirus Technology Solutions
May 20, 2020
W.L. Gore has a Number of
Products it is Developing to
Fight COVID
Sentry has a Range of Portable
Air Cleaners
ASHRAE Advises that COVID Can
Travel Through HVAC
N80 Masks Should be Worn by
Three Billion People Who are in
Public Space Every Day.
Localization of Media Supply
Russian Petrochemical Company
and Non Wovens Manufacturer are
Planning Meltblown Expansion
Travel Bubbles for Those
Eliminating COVID and Excluding
Those Countries Just Trying to
Suppress It
DuPont Doubling Protective Gown
Production
Sterile Glove Use for COVID will
Rise Throughout the World
KCC Looks to Expand Wiper
Business to Address COVID
Full List of Pennsylvania
Nursing Homes with COVID Cases
is Available
Pressure on Illinois Meat
Processing Plants to Close
Sanderson
Farms
in Bryan Texas Becomes a Hot
Spot
_____________________________________________________________________________
W.L. Gore has a Number of
Products it is Developing to
Fight COVID
Gore has engineered prototype
reusable mask covers to
supplement clinicians’ primary
face masks. These covers,
developed by a cross-divisional
team, are made from a material
that:
·
is a proprietary Gore high-flow
filtration laminate
·
provides greater than 99%
aerosolized virus particle
protection
·
is water repellent yet air
permeable, and
·
can be reused after autoclave or
EtO sterilization
This effort went from a product
concept to prototypes in less
than one week. Gore currently
has prototypes being evaluated
at a limited number of U.S.
facilities in COVID-19 outbreak
hot spots. Based on feedback
from those piloting the
prototype, Gore intends to
optimize the PPE Protector
design and then scale up
production for broader
distribution.
Examples of other initiatives
underway include:
·
Protective medical gowns, using
fabric laminates from current
inventory
·
Universal filter cartridge
prototypes for use in
respirators, hoods and
ventilators that incorporate
Gore filtration materials
intended to provide N95
particulate protection
·
Disposable N95 respirators,
using Gore filtration laminates
Sentry has a Range of Portable
Air Cleaners
Portable Air Cleaners are
compact, self-contained, air
filtration systems that are best
utilized in filtering hazardous
fumes, vapors and particulates
from the ambient air. Typically
used in offices, hotel rooms,
small warehouses, and locations
where ducting and oversized
ventilation cannot suffice,
portable air cleaners are a
necessity to eliminate high
volumes of contaminants to
protect users, applications and
the immediate environment.
Three models are available. The
largest handles 700 CFM.
ASHRAE Advises that COVID Can
Travel Through HVAC
The American
Society of Heating,
Refrigerating and
Air-Conditioning Engineers offers
guidance. “Transmission
of SARS-CoV-2 through the air is
sufficiently likely that
airborne exposure to the virus
should be controlled. Changes to
building operations, including
the operation of heating,
ventilating, and
air-conditioning systems, can
reduce airborne exposures,” the
trade group said in a statement in
April.
A lower-tech solution is simply
to allow more fresh air into the
building. Like handwashing or
covering your cough. According
to Joseph Allen of Harvard,
ventilating spaces with outdoor
air is a basic public health
practice and can dilute
contaminated indoor air. “If you
have operable windows, you
keep your windows open,” Allen
said. For residents concerned
about recirculated air in their
building, he added, “a
supplemental control
strategy can be the use of
portable air purifiers — which,
if they have a HEPA filter and
they’re sized correctly for the
room, can be effective at
capturing airborne particles as
well.”
An even less likelier, but
definitely more revolting, route
of transmission could be a
building’s plumbing network. “As
little as we know about air, we
know considerably less about
plumbing,” says
Dr. Cassandra Pierre, assistant
professor of medicine at Boston
University
Pierre . “We do know that the
virus can be shed in the stool,”
she said, and could live in
sewage if it’s like other
coronaviruses. Pierre points to
a famous case in Hong Kong
during the SARS outbreak of the
early 2000s, when the virus
spread to more than 300 people
in the Amoy Gardens housing
complex — largely through open
drains in the bathroom floors,
which allowed aerosols from
infected waste to migrate
throughout the apartment
building.
That’s obviously a scary and
disgusting prospect, Pierre
acknowledged, but it’s rare to
find such drain systems in the
United States. (If you’ve ever
wondered why most drains have a
U-shaped bend in them, it’s to
allow water to stay in the pipe,
blocking sewage gases from
coming back up.) Still, she
said, it’s worth ensuring that
your drains are working
properly.
N80 Masks Should be Worn by
Three Billion People Who are in
Public Space Every Day.
In a conversation with Dave
Rousse of INDA earlier this week
he talked about the N80 concept.
This gives a specific
name to what he believes will be
a critical mission to assure
that everyone in a public space
is wearing an efficient mask. In
our previous Alerts we have
written about the
Berry Development of a
mask in this quality range.
We further covered it in
a
Berry Profile.
We also reported earlier about
Ahlstrom-Munksjö, whose
products Reliance SMS 200,
Reliance SMS 300, Reliance
Dextex 200 and Reliance Dextex
300 have been declared
compatible with the French
requirements for face masks used
by civil servants in contact
with the public. The material is
typically used for the
manufacture of sterilization
wraps for surgical instruments.
Reliance SMS 200 and Reliance
SMS 300 have also been tested
compatible with the European
Standard EN 14683, meeting the
performance criteria of surgical
masks.
Localization of Media Supply
The reality is that the
international cooperation which
has served us so well in past
pandemics is no longer certain.
Hopefully this situation will be
resolved in the coming years. In
the short term localization of
media supply will be a priority.
Reicofil, a manufacturers of
machinery for meltblown
nonwovens, a critical component
in N95 facial masks, announced
in late March it had shortened
the timeframe for the supply of
a meltblown line to under four
months.
CEO Bernd Reifenhäuser called
for state-owned industrial
production sites with closed
supply chains to supply Europe
with protective materials
independently and competitively.
Russian Petrochemical Company
and Non Wovens Manufacturer are
Planning Meltblown Expansion
SIBUR, Russia’s largest
integrated petrochemicals
company, and Netkanika, a major
manufacturer of nonwovens,
announced plans to expand their
cooperation to provide the
healthcare industry with high
quality single-use personal
protective equipment. Under the
agreement, SIBUR provides
polypropylene for Netkanika’s
nonwovens output serving the
medical and hygiene industries.
While Netkanika has not
announced any line investments
amidst increased demand for
medical and protective
materials, it has focused on
some de-bottlenecking and other
maintenance tasks to be better
prepared for demand growth.
Travel Bubbles for Those
Eliminating COVID and Excluding
Those Countries Just Trying to
Suppress It
The first bubble is due to come
to life on May 15th between
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,
among Europe’s best performers
in taming the virus. Their
citizens will be free to travel
inside the zone without
quarantine. The next might be a
trans-Tasman bubble, tying New
Zealand to Australia’s state of
Tasmania, both of which have
kept new cases down. China and
South Korea have launched a
‘fast track’ entry channel for
business people.”
Michael Baker, an epidemiologist
at New Zealand’s University of
Otago, has a theory, suggesting
that the world could
split into two broad categories
that will guide travel
restrictions: those countries
seeking to eliminate Covid-19
(like New Zealand and South
Korea), and those (like the US
and UK) seeking to merely
suppress it.
DuPont Doubling Protective Gown
Production
DuPont is doubling production of
protective garments it makes
from its Tyvek material to about
30 million a month to help meet
increased demand due to the
coronavirus outbreak.
The spread of the pandemic
across Europe and the United
States has led to a worldwide
scramble for protective masks,
gowns and gloves worn by
healthcare and other workers
battling to curb the spread of
the virus.
Johns Hopkins Center for Health
Security estimated this month
that a single 100-day COVID-19
wave would create a need for 321
million more isolation gowns,
such as those made by DuPont, in
the United States alone.
Before the coronavirus crisis,
the global market for personal
protective equipment (PPE) was
valued at about $40 billion
annually, with DuPont and U.S.
peers Honeywell International
Inc and 3M Co among the biggest
players. That will now increase.
"We're producing up to almost
two times the number of garments
per month to help support the
demand that's currently in front
of us," John Richard, vice
president of DuPont's safety
business told Reuters.
DuPont's Tyvek, a fabric used in
gowns and coveralls for
protective use, has been a
silver lining for the company as
it faces steep declines in
demand for its products in the
auto sector and other industries
hammered by the virus.
DuPont is a top player in the
PPE market with other products
such as protective gloves,
flame-resistant and chemical
protective clothing.
The company expects the
heightened demand to continue at
least until later this year as
industries resume operations and
bring back workers using
additional safety measures.
DuPont, which makes Tyvek in
Richmond, Virginia and
Luxembourg, has re-purposed its
manufacturing operations and
simplified some designs to eke
out more pieces per square area
of the fabric.
Dow, part of the erstwhile
DowDuPont conglomerate before a
split last year, has also
started making sanitizers and
face shields to meet growing
demand.
Sterile Glove Use for COVID will
Rise Throughout the World
Glove manufacturers around the
world are increasing production
to meet the demands caused by
COVID. The following five
companies have a worldwide
presence.
Ansell Ltd.
Ansell Ltd. operates its
business through segments such
as Industrial and Healthcare.
The company offers sterile
gloves under the brands, GAMMEX
and MICRO-TOUCH DermaClean
Sterile.
B.
Braun Melsungen AG
B.
Braun Melsungen AG operates its
business through segments such
as B. Braun Hospital Care, B.
Braun Aesculap, B. Braun Out
Patient Market, and B. Braun
Avitum. The company offers
sterile gloves under the brand,
Vasco OP Sensitive.
Cardinal Health Inc.
Cardinal Health Inc. operates
its business through segments
such as Pharmaceutical and
Medical. The company offers
sterile gloves under the brand,
Protexis.
Dynarex Corp.
Dynarex Corp. operates its
business through segments such
as Disposable medical products
and Durable medical equipment.
The company offers sterile
gloves under the brand, Dynarex.
Kimberly-Clark Corp.
Kimberly-Clark Corp. operates
its business through segments
such as Personal Care, Consumer
Tissue, and K-C Professional
(KCP). The company offers
sterile gloves under the brand,
KIMTECH PURE.
KCC
Looks to Expand Wiper Business
to Address COVID
In
the April 22, 2020 earnings call
Kimberly Clark executives
answered analysts questions
relative to COVID and PPE.
Lauren Lieberman -- Barclays
Capital -- Analyst
And
then right now in that wipers
and safety business, I think on
the KCP website sort of talked
about we're doing our best to
keep up with demand. So you can
just tell us a little bit about,
I think just to be educational
for people, what does PPE
products are? If you are
currently running full out on
those businesses and what growth
looks like there? Because,
again, just trying to fit
together that order of magnitude
of K-C Professional being down
in the second quarter makes
perfect sense, but how much,
right? And we can all -- if you
give us the tools, we can try to
come up with estimates on our
own of what that looks like?
Michael D. Hsu -- Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I may ask Paul to jump in,
but I will say maybe the bigger
part of the business that we
feel like we can expand right
now is on the wiper side, and
that's a great business for us
and strong performing. And we're
seeing that that commensurate
increase starting to come
through now. On the safety side,
it is a relatively small
business for us, we don't
produce any of the PPE masks or
gloves directly. We have those
co-packed and so we are in a
tight supply situation as
everybody else in the world
have. And so we expect that to
grow over time. But in the near
term, we're in a tight supply
situation. Paul, anything to add
there.
Paul Alexander -- Investor
Relations
Yeah. Thanks, Mike. So, Lauren
and for everyone on the call,
just to level set on KCP's rough
product exposure, about 65% is
tissue-based products, about 20%
is wipers and then about 10% is
-- are these safety and
scientific products that Mike
mentioned. The safety and
scientific products are
primarily apparel and gloves
with a little bit of eyewear as
well. Masks are an insignificant
part of the business.
Full List of Pennsylvania
Nursing Homes with COVID Cases
is Available
Here is the first page of 56
pages with names of nursing
homes in PA with COVID cases.
A link to the full list
is provided below.
Page 1 of 56
The
full list is displayed at
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/05/full-list-of-pa-nursing-homes-with-coronavirus-cases-and-deaths.html
Pressure on Illinois Meat
Processing Plants to Close
As the number of infections
continue to rise at the nation's
meat processing plants, a small
group of doctors gathered in
Chicago's Back of the Yards
neighborhood Tuesday, May 19 to
call on the governor to shut
them down.
For workers, the choice is a
difficult one: go to work with
fears of contracting the disease
or stay home and risk losing a
job.
Sanderson Farms in Bryan Texas
Becomes a Hot Spot
Dr.
Seth Sullivan says the Brazos
County Health Department is
working closely with Sanderson
Farms in Bryan due to an
outbreak of cases at the plant.
Twenty-six employees have been
affected — with roughly a dozen
of those cases happening in the
past week.
“They’ve been in touch with the
state, we’ve been in touch with
the state, about the most
appropriate way of dealing with
this moving forward,” Sullivan
said. The state has strike teams
in place ready to respond to
nursing homes, prisons, and
places like Sanderson Farms
although that action has yet to
happen. |