Coronavirus Technology Solutions
June 1, 2020
Jofo Nonwovens Acquisition of PFNonwovens
Includes Face Mask Line In Europe
Team at ASU Uses Wastewater to Track
Coronavirus and Single Out an Individual Among
Two Million
Schools Reopen with Partitions but What About
Laminar Air Flow and filtration?
Lydall has Multiple COVID Initiatives Including
Long Term Meltblown Contract with Honeywell not
3M
Honeywell has Contract with State of Colorado
More than 25,000 Nursing Home Deaths from COVID
As Florida Reopens Nursing Home Deaths Rise
One Third of 43,000 COVID Deaths in UK were in
Nursing Homes
Room Air Purifiers Being Furnished to at Risk
Homeowners in Clairton PA
UV is One Option for Dentist Offices
______________________________________________________________________________
Jofo Nonwovens Acquisition of PFNonwovens
Includes Face Mask Line In Europe
Jofo Nonwovens, based in Weifang, Shandong,
China, will acquire PFNonwovens' Wuxi,
China-based nonwovens operation. PFNonwovens
acquired the operation from First Quality
Nonwovens in 2018. First Quality started making
spunmelt nonwovens in Wuxi in 2013.
Jofo, fast growing and leading nonwovens
supplier in China, has four manufacturing sites
in Asia. With the transaction, Jofo is expecting
to enter into growing medical sector on top of
its existing hygiene and industrial businesses.
PFN is a global leading producer of nonwoven
textiles with operations in Europe, USA and
Africa. It will continue, post transaction, to
supply nonwovens worldwide to its customers in
absorbent hygiene with a focus on premium infant
care, adult incontinence, feminine hygiene and
medical protective products for the retail and
health care markets.
“PFN Wuxi is a
very well managed site with a strong team and
very good location," says Rain Tian, CEO of Jofo.
"This transaction takes Jofo entering into
medical nonwoven market in Asia and provides
more capacity to address the growing demand of
our existing customers. Also, a strong logistic
position in East China region will enable Jofo
to support the customers in that region better.
We commit to invest strongly in Wuxi site to
make it a strong manufacturing base with more
new capacities and technologies to better serve
our customers.”
“This transaction will enable us to fully focus
on supporting our global customers in their key
markets, as we continue to build on PFN`s core
strengths, namely high value added and
innovative products. It will allow us to bring
forward the building of two new production lines
in North America and Europe to increase our
production capacities in absorbent hygiene and
the medical segment," says Allen Bodford, CEO of
PFN. "In addition, we will continue our
expansion into Africa with our new South African
line, which started its commercial production in
Q4 2019. We are very pleased that we are passing
on the Wuxi plant to a strong Chinese investor
with plans to expand capacity and to build out
the facility. We would like to also express our
sincere appreciation and gratitude to our entire
workforce in China for all their great work over
the years.”
In April, PFN announced it was adding a Reicofil
5 spunmelt line in the U.S. and a meltblown
asset in the Czech Republic. The U.S. investment
will largely target medical and hygiene
applications while the Czech line will make
materials for face masks and medical wipes,
which will be made available to the Czech
government as well as private customers.
Team at ASU Uses
Wastewater to Track Coronavirus and Single Out
an Individual Among Two Million
Recently, researchers from
the Center for Environmental Health Engineering
at Arizona State University's Biodesign
Institute have developed a new approach to
monitoring regional levels of SARS-CoV-2—the
virus that causes COVID-19.
The research is being
conducted through a partnership between the
university and the City of Tempe, Arizona.
Led by Professor Rolf Halden,
who directs the Biodesign Center for
Environmental Health Engineering and teaches in
ASU’s School for Sustainability and the Built
Environment, and Olga Hart, lead author of the
new study and a researcher in the Biodesign
Center for Health Engineering, the team has
begun developing a new monitoring approach for
the novel coronavirus, among other dangerous
pathogens and chemical agents, in wastewater.
Our results show that
exclusive reliance on testing of individuals is
too slow, cost-prohibitive and in most places,
impractical, given our current testing
capacity,” Halden said. “However, when preceded
by population-wide screening of wastewater, the
task becomes less daunting and more manageable.”
In their redefined method,
known as wastewater-based epidemiology, the
researchers collect sewage samples so that clues
can be analyzed over human health, and can even
detect levels of coronavirus infection at both a
local and global scale. The high sensitivity of
the type of study is also reported to have the
potential to detect the signature of a single
infected individual among 100 to 2 million
persons.
According to ASU, the
research method could lead to real-time
monitoring of disease outbreaks, resistant
microbes, levels of drug use or health
indicators of diabetes, obesity and other
maladies.
The process works by first
transcribing coronavirus RNA into complementary
DNA (cDNA) by the reverse transcriptase enzyme,
then amplifying the resultant DNA to improve
signal detection. This step is followed by the
use of sequencing techniques to confirm viral
presence in the wastewater samples.
When probing for the
SARS-CoV-2 virus, the wastewater is screened for
the presence of the virus’ nucleic acid
fragments. The RNA genomes are amplified through
a process known as reverse-transcriptase
quantitative PCR (RT qPCR).
"We can, in one go, monitor
an entire community for presence of the new
coronavirus,” Hart said. “However, trade-offs
exist. To get the best results and avoid loss of
information, we want to measure close to virus
hot spots and take into account wastewater
temperature and dilution when estimating the
number of infected cases."
Already, the university
suggests that each person infected with
SARS-CoV-2 will excrete millions, possibly
billions, of viral genomes into wastewater per
day, based on estimates on European and North
America data. Given those chances, researchers
have translated that number to landing somewhere
between 0.15 and 141.5 million viral genomes per
liter of wastewater generated.
Using this type of monitoring
system, along with RT qPCR, researchers predict
that they could detect the coronavirus with high
sensitivity, simply by monitoring roughly every
1 in 114 individuals in the worst-case scenario
and just one positive case among 2 million
noninfected individuals under optimum
conditions. The information collected would be
able to help pinpoint viral hotspots so that
resources could better be directed to vulnerable
populations, while restrictions could be eased
in virus-free regions.
Although the research has
since been published in an issue of the
journal, Science of the Total Environment,
the team has also created OneWaterOneHealth, a
nonprofit project of the ASU Foundation that
seeks to bring COVID-19 testing to those who
currently cannot afford it.
Halden reports that using the
ASU-designed screening, roughly 70% of the U.S.
population could be screened for SARS-CoV-2
through monitoring the country’s 15,014
wastewater treatment plants at an estimated cost
for chemical reagents of $225,000.
Once hotspots in the nation
are targeted, testing individuals using clinical
methods could then be implemented.
Schools Reopen with Partitions but What About
Laminar Air Flow and filtration?
The Pima County superintendent, Dustin Williams,
toured a charter school and was impressed that
the
Da Vinci Tree Academy had installed partitions.
The question McIlvaine keeps asking is what
consideration is there of laminar air flow.
Partitions can keep virus laded air in
suspension.
Many industries are proceeding as if the virus
is contained in big droplets such as rain when
instead much of the danger comes from aerosols
smaller than cigarette smoke.
Lydall has Multiple COVID Initiatives Including
Long Term Meltblown Contract with Honeywell not
3M
In our May 29 Alert we had 3M in the title when
it should have been Honeywell. In the text we
did accurately quote CEO, Sara A. Greenstein “In
May, we secured a major long-term agreement with
Honeywell to supply meltblown filtration media
for their N95 mask production facilities. Our
proven technical and production capabilities
were key factors in our selection. As a result,
we have already committed additional capital to
acquire a new meltblown production line to
satisfy this and related demand.”
Honeywell has Contract with State of Colorado
Last week
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced a
partnership with Honeywell that will bring
millions of N95 face masks to the state.
Honeywell, will produce 6 million masks for
health care workers in the state, the governor
said.
The masks will “keep our front line health care
workers safe,” Polis said, attributing the
17-month contract to his administration’s
Innovation Response Team.
The governor added he’s been in continued
contact with the federal government about
receiving more personal protective equipment.
“I also joined the vice president on a call
where I talked about continuing our
partnership with the federal government to
supply high-quality PPE to our nursing homes,”
he said. “They received their first shipment;
they’ll be receiving an additional shipment
shortly.”
Nursing homes across the nation and in Colorado
have been hit hard by COVID-19, with one analysis finding
57.5 percent of all deaths from the virus in
Colorado occurring in long term care facilities.
More than 25,000 Nursing Home Deaths from COVID
The federal government has begun sharing its
tracking data for nursing home fatalities for
the first time since the novel coronavirus outbreak,
a step long urged by members of Congress as an
important way to guide efforts to protect the
elderly and frail as the nation tries to reopen.
“Without this information, adequate testing and
a full supply of personal protective equipment,
our seniors will continue to suffer,” U.S. Sen.
Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said last
month.
The new, initial numbers from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services were shared in a
letter to U.S. governors dated Sunday and
obtained by ABC News. The numbers document that
at least 25,923 nursing home residents have died
as a result of COVID-19, though the figure
doesn't include reporting from some states prior
to May and differs from state-by-state reports
due to disparities in the way data is tracked.
The federal regulators also acknowledge their
first release of figures may account for about
80% of the nation’s nursing homes, and that
“data maybe inconsistent with state data,
particularly state death data.”
The survey is the first to include the number of
nursing home staff killed in the outbreak, which
federal officials list at 449 fatalities across
the country. And it marks the first public
accounting of deaths in 10 states that were not
previously publishing any data about the
outbreak’s severe impact on those in long-term
care facilities during ABC News' most recent
survey.
Along with the new figures, the federal agency
that regulates nursing homes told governors they
intend to step up penalties and enforcement of
infection control efforts. Problems containing
infections using trusted methods, like frequent
hand-washing and changing gloves and masks, have
surfaced frequently during inspections of
facilities where there have been deadly
coronavirus outbreaks. In inspections, multiple
facilities have been shown not to be using
certain infection control methods properly.
The federal totals remain lower than the numbers
gathered through a state-by-state analysis
conducted by ABC News in mid-May. That survey
found more than 37,600
deaths attributed
to the coronavirus in nursing homes and
long-term care facilities from 40 states and the
District of Columbia stretching back to the
beginning of the crisis.
Just over 100,000 total coronavirus deaths in
the U.S. have been reported since the outbreak
reached America's shores, according to a tally
by Johns Hopkins University.
The new federal count shows that in the 10
states that were not reported nursing home
fatalities during ABC News' last survey of
national data, an additional 794 residents and
staff have died. Those states are Alaska,
Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine,
Montana, Missouri and Utah.
As Florida Reopens
Nursing Home Deaths Rise
Over the most recent week, elders living in
long-term care facilities accounted for seven in
10 Florida deaths resulting from the
coronavirus, as the pandemic increasingly became
a scourge of the old and frail.
Though the cumulative overall number of deaths
attributed to COVID-19, the illness caused by
exposure to the coronavirus, doubled in May,
coronavirus deaths at nursing homes and assisted
living facilities tripled. As of Monday, 1,236
people at long-term care facilities had died
from COVID-19.
One Third of 43,000 COVID Deaths in UK were in
Nursing Homes
More than 43,000 people have suffered deaths
linked to COVID-19 across the United Kingdom,
underlining the country’s status as the
worst-hit in Europe.
At least 13,500 deaths linked to the novel
coronavirus — nearly 1 in 3 — have occurred in
British nursing and residential homes, known as
care homes in the United Kingdom. Care homes are
places where elderly or vulnerable people live
for short or long periods of time and can
receive nursing care.
But that is only a part of the pandemic’s tragic
impact inside care homes across the United
Kingdom. Deaths attributed to other causes have
also risen sharply over the same period — so
much so that the homes have 26,000 more deaths
than is typical, a concept known as “excess
deaths.”
Room Air Purifiers
Being Furnished to at Risk Homeowners in
Clairton PA
Johnnie Perryman, a 77-year-old Clairton
resident recovering from recent major heart
surgery, likes to sit on his front porch in the
sunshine, but on most days he can’t because of
the chronically bad air quality in the
industrialized Mon Valley community.
So he’s forced to retreat inside where he can
breathe easier due to a whole house air
purification system, he credits with saving his
life.
“That purification device is the reason I’m
still alive,” said Mr. Perryman, a member of
Valley Clean Air Now.
The local citizen’s group is part of a
nine-member coalition working on a new program
to provide free air purifiers to Clairton
residents with cardiovascular and respiratory
disease who are most at risk during the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic.
People already in the worst of health are the
ones dying of COVID. We have to help save as
many as we can,” Mr. Perryman said. “We also
need to help others avoid developing preexisting
conditions.”
The Clairton Home Air Filter Distribution
Program will accept applications through
Saturday of this week, inform those selected in
early June and have the room air purifiers
delivered within three or four weeks, by the
beginning of July.
The indoor air purifiers are able to reduce
levels of fine airborne particulate matter, or
soot, as well as other pollutants, from outside
air pollution sources like U.S. Steel Corp.’s
Clairton Coke Works. That plant is the biggest
coke-making facility in the U.S. and among the
largest emitters of air pollutants in Allegheny
County.
“Residents of Clairton are now at a heightened
risk for COVID due to ongoing air pollution
issues,” said Dr. Deborah Gentile, medical
director for Community Partners in Asthma Care,
another coalition member. “This much-needed
program will provide the most vulnerable members
of the Clairton community some protection
against air pollution and its harmful health
effects.”
More than 225 households, containing 585
residents, have already applied for the air
purifiers, said Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania
director for Clean Water Action, a member of the
coalition.
Of those applicants, 29% have respiratory
problems, 26% have cardiovascular disease and
11% have diabetes. Many of the applicant
households reported having multiple health
problems.
“The response from residents has been
overwhelming, with most of the applicants having
serious health conditions,” Mr. Arnowitt said.
“This program is demonstrating what Clairton
residents have been saying for years — that
pollution in the area has made them vulnerable
to health problems, including COVID-19.”
A $54,000 Heinz Endowments grant provides the
program’s seed money, Mr. Arnowitt said, enough
to buy air
purifiers for 40 to 50 families in the first
round. He said the number of air purifiers would
be tailored to a family’s home size and needs.
UV is One Option for Dentist Offices
As more
businesses reopen, dental practices are
considering enhanced measures to clean their
facilities and equipment, as well as protect
their patients and staff. CNBC provided a good
summary of options.
One method involves using ultraviolet light to
sanitize the air, surfaces and equipment in
dental offices. Disinfecting with UV light
products is widely used in hospitals and larger
medical facilities, but now small practices are
looking into adopting the technology.
Brett Messina, vice president of sales and
marketing at Medical Illumination, which makes
VidaShield, an air purifier that disinfects
using UV light. estimated that 80% to 90% of the
company’s new requests were coming from dental
offices.
However, before committing to purchasing a
product that may cost $2,000 per unit, dentists
should understand the advantages and drawbacks
of UV technology and know their options. This
investment could be particularly costly at a
time when practices may be trying to recoup
profits after closing operations during the
Covid-19 pandemic.
Dentists in particular may be considering new
sanitizing technology in reopening their
business because they use procedures where
people can easily transmit the virus through
droplets in the air, according to Ann Marie
Pettis, president-elect of the Association for
Professionals in Infection Control and
Epidemiology.
She said basic hygiene practices and protective
gear should be dentists’ first step in
preventing disease transmission.
“Much of what they need to do is what they
probably and hopefully were already doing,”
Pettis said.
They can also implement new measures such as
spacing people 6 feet apart in the waiting room,
staggering appointments, practicing “telephone
triage,” where patients are asked questions to
ensure they are not sick prior to dental
treatment and even temperature-screening
visitors, according to Pettis.
The American Dental Association gives similar
recommendations in its “Return to Work Interim
Guidance Toolkit,” which does not mention UV
light decontamination. In response to being
asked about UV sanitizing in dental offices, ADA
told CNBC it “is researching many strategies to
mitigate possible routes of infection.”
“We will continue to evaluate the validity of
emerging evidence and research to support any
future recommendations supporting the safety and
health of the public and profession,” the
association said in a statement.
If dentists are interested in purchasing
sanitizing equipment in addition to following
ADA hygiene practices, UV light products may be
a viable option. Pettis said UV sanitizing has
been used in large health care facilities for
years and is “very effective” in killing germs
and bacteria.
UV light is also particularly useful against
coronaviruses, according to Dr. Richard
Martinello, an associate professor at Yale
School of Medicine and medical director of the
Department of Infection Prevention at Yale New
Haven Hospital. Martinello is also on the board
of the International Ultraviolet Association,
which promotes the use of ultraviolet light in
sanitizing practices.
“One good thing about the coronavirus is that it
is a very fragile virus,” Martinello said. “What
makes it fragile is that it has a layer of
lipids, a fatty layer that coats the virus
itself, and that layer is very easily
disrupted.”
UV light as well as cleaning products like soap
and disinfectants can destroy this layer,
causing the virus to degrade and die, according
to Martinello.
He said his association has seen an increasing
interest in UV light applications since the
onset of the pandemic. However, just because UV
light is effective in decontaminating surfaces
does not mean it’s effective for treating the
virus in humans, which was an idea President
Donald Trump pitched at a press briefing in
April.
Staff members need to take special precautions
in order to use this equipment properly,
including not being in the room when it is in
operation, according to Nicole Greeson, director
of the Occupational Hygiene and Safety Division
at Duke University and a board officer of
the American Industrial Hygiene Association.
“It can cause burns to the skin and to the eyes
if the person was not covered with appropriate
personal protective equipment, so the best means
of protection is to actually have them leave the
room so that they wouldn’t have exposure,”
Greeson said.
She said this kind of large equipment may not be
the best fit for small medical or dental
practices, and that other options are available,
especially when it comes sanitizing dental
tools.
“UV is typically not used for equipment because
there are definitely materials for which it’s
not compatible,” Greeson said, citing plastic as
an example.
Instead, dentists can rely on autoclaves, which
are chambers that can come in small sizes and
use heat to sterilize tools, according to
Greeson.
However, that’s not to say there aren’t UV
sterilizing chambers available.
Online dental supplies retailer Treedental has
seen an increase in demand for its UV Dental
Disinfection Cabinet, according to Jenny Pan, an
advertising and marketing planner at the
China-based company. The unit has a list price
of $145 and a disinfection time of 15 minutes
and is supposed to be able to eliminate germs on
glass, metal and plastic tools.
The company has been careful in mentioning UV
light as being effective against the coronavirus
in marketing its products, as research into this
is “ongoing,” according to Pan.
“There is not enough data to say that UV lights
can inactivate Covid-19,” she said.
Instead, when advertising items like masks and
gloves, Treedental only mentions products’
ability to “protect” against the coronavirus.
Medical Illumination has taken a similar tactic
in promoting its VidaShield UV light air
purifier, though Messina said the product has
been effective in eliminating different
coronaviruses, as well as other germs and
bacteria, including MRSA, tuberculosis and
influenza.
“The interest in the VidaShield product has gone
up significantly with the pandemic that we’re
going through now,” he said. “The air is where a
lot of stuff lives.”
In eliminating germs in the air, the product
keeps them from settling on surfaces, according
to Messina. He said the product is commonly used
in hospitals, but that dental offices are
becoming interested, too.
Installed in the ceiling, VidaShield uses fans
to draw in air from the surrounding environment
and purifies it using UV-C light. It also
contains either fluorescent or LED tubing
allowing it double as a ceiling light panel.
VidaShield also doesn’t have the same risks as a
disinfecting tower does in exposing people to UV
light because it is self-contained within the
product, according to Messina.
“No UV escapes out of this unit, so it’s safe to
use in an occupied space, meaning this can be on
24 hours a day, seven days a week, continually
cleaning the air,” he said.
VidaShield costs anywhere from $1,400 to $2,000
per unit, depending on the model, according to
Messina. Comparatively, UV light towers
typically used by hospitals and other medical
facilities can range in price from $25,000 to
$100,000 per unit.
UV Resources, another manufacturer of UV light
sanitizing devices, has seen a tenfold increase
in business inquiries, including from dental
offices and other businesses.
Currently facing back orders, the company has
been struggling to meet demand because there are
a limited number of manufacturers that make the
UV lamps it needs for its products.
UV Resources makes Upper-Room UV-C fixtures,
which are mounted on the wall in order to treat
air in the environment and costs around $1,000
per unit. Unlike the VidaShield, the UV light is
not contained within the unit. Instead, it emits
UV light at an upward angle, creating a “kill
zone” for microbes that rise in the air near the
ceiling, according to Jones.
UV Resources has faced a rush of inquiries from
various businesses consider installing air
purifiers in their offices and break rooms.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/dental-practices-consider-using-uv-light-tech-to-safely-reopen.html
