Millions of N95 respirators could be decontaminated and reused every day, Pentagon says
To aid with the national shortage of N95 respirators, a nonprofit will provide, under a Department of Defense contract, 60 decontamination units to clean and reuse the masks up to 20 times without compromising their performance (Michael Swan/Flickr)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded a $415 million contract for the development and delivery of sterilization machines that will clean up 80,000 used N95 respirator masks per day, the Pentagon announced Monday.
The decontamination units will help disinfect N95 masks, allowing each mask to be reused up to 20 times before disposing them. The masks have been a crucial piece of personal protective equipment (PPE) nurses and other medical staff use when treating COVID-19 patients. As the N95 respirator mask protects who wears it against germs more efficiently than regular surgical masks, a national shortage of PPE has been widely reported.
The contract is with Battelle, a nonprofit headquartered in Ohio, and comes through the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency on behalf of the Department of Human and Health Services.
The Department of Homeland Security will prioritize which cities receive the decontamination units and deployment is expected to begin by early May. Once they are delivered, the 60 units will allow 4.8 million masks to be sterilized per day, or almost 34 million per week, according to the announcement.
The N95 respirators are decontaminated by being exposed to concentrated, vapor phase hydrogen peroxide, and can go through the process multiple times without downgrading the mask’s filter performance, according to Battelle. The company has already delivered two units to the New York area, as well as one each to Columbus, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Tacoma, Washington; and Boston, Massachusetts.
It has yet to be determined which cities will receive the remaining units.
‘I remain extremely proud of the selfless efforts of Department of Defense personnel who continue to do everything they can to help provide medical masks, test kits, medicine and meals to support America’s military, medical, emergency services and law enforcement professionals who are on the front lines and need them most,’ said Ellen Lord, under secretary of defense.
In addition, the first coronavirus-related Pentagon contract under the Defense Production Act will provide almost 40 million N95 respirators over the next 90 days, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters Tuesday.
“This will help ensure our government has the industrial capacity to meet the nation’s needs,” Esper said.
