Yucatan Times: First Exclusive Coronavirus Supply Store Opens in NYC. “A new business billing itself as the city’s first coronavirus safety supply store opened to customers in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, NY, last month. The CV-19 Essential store near Herald Square is selling safety products for homes and businesses, including face masks, cell phone sanitizers, plexiglass dividers, UV lights and air purifiers.”
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
New York Times: An Arms Dealer, an Ex-N.F.L. Player and Huge Federal Contracts for Medical Gowns
New York Times: An Arms Dealer, an Ex-N.F.L. Player and Huge Federal Contracts for Medical Gowns. “The Defense Department distributed more than $1 billion in federal contracts last month to companies for disposable medical gowns to protect those on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 100 large and midsize companies, many with track records of successfully completing federal procurement contracts, bid for the work. But the majority of the awards ultimately went to a handful of unexpected and inexperienced companies that now find themselves on the hook to produce hundreds of millions of gowns in a matter of months.”
Texas doctor, 28, dies of Covid: ‘She wore the same mask for weeks, if not months’ (The Guardian)
The Guardian: Texas doctor, 28, dies of Covid: ‘She wore the same mask for weeks, if not months’. “[Adeline] Fagan is one of over 250 medical staff who died in southern and western hotspot states as the virus surged there over the summer, according to reporting by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News as part of Lost on the Frontline, a project to track every US healthcare worker death. In Texas, nine medical deaths in April soared to 33 in July, after Governor Greg Abbott hastily pushed to reopen the state for business and then reversed course.”
SF Gate: The upcoming nitrile glove shortage could be way worse than the mask shortage
SF Gate: The upcoming nitrile glove shortage could be way worse than the mask shortage. “In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, a nitrile glove shortage may not seem as dire as a mask shortage. After all, no virus can ‘drill through the skin on your hand,’ and masks are still the best safety precaution for most people. However, these gloves are still a necessity for medical professionals, tattoo artists, food servers, and mechanics. Plus, they have various at-home uses including gardening, cleaning, and safety precautions for the immunocompromised. Right now, our supplies are dwindling — and the United States currently has no domestic manufacturers.”
AP: US medical supply chains failed, and COVID deaths followed
AP: US medical supply chains failed, and COVID deaths followed. “The Associated Press and ‘FRONTLINE’ launched a seven-month investigation — filing Freedom of Information Act requests, testing medical masks, interviewing dozens of experts from hard-hit hospitals to the White House — to understand what was behind these critical shortages. Medical supply chains that span oceans and continents are the fragile lifelines between raw materials and manufacturers overseas, and health care workers on COVID-19 front lines in the U.S. As link after link broke, the system fell apart.”
Not A Joke: This Helmet With HEPA Filters Is A Real Product Money Can Buy (Mike Shouts)
Mike Shouts: Not A Joke: This Helmet With HEPA Filters Is A Real Product Money Can Buy. “Well, what do I know? I thought the spherical helmet conceptualized by art collective Plastique Fantastique in response to the pandemic was not something to be taken seriously. But then this happen: AIR by MicroClimate.”
New York Times: Despite Claims, Trump Rarely Uses Wartime Law in Battle Against Covid
New York Times: Despite Claims, Trump Rarely Uses Wartime Law in Battle Against Covid. “President Trump has sweeping powers to compel companies to produce protective gear and to guarantee that the federal government will pay them for it — and as his election campaign intensifies, he has been boasting about aggressively using them. But in fact, most of his administration’s use of that authority, granted under the Cold-War Defense Production Act, has had nothing to do with the pandemic.”
Technology Times Pakistan: PPE Designers Redefine Masks During A COVID-19 Pandemic
Technology Times Pakistan: PPE Designers Redefine Masks During A COVID-19 Pandemic. “Experts say that PPE like masks is critical for slowing the spread of Covid-19. But for much of the pandemic, high-quality PPE has been in short supply for medical workers. Meanwhile, PPE available to the public has been of variable quality, with users complaining that cheap cloth masks, although widely available and recommended by public health agencies, are uncomfortable, hamper social interactions, and have limited effectiveness. Those issues have spurred new innovation, as inventors strive to make PPE cheaper, safer, more comfortable, and more accessible – and, in many cases, may see opportunities to turn a profit while doing so.”
Phys .org: Copper coating on 3-D-printed plastic filters proposed as a pandemic fighter
Phys .org: Copper coating on 3-D-printed plastic filters proposed as a pandemic fighter. “In the ongoing fight against COVID-19, experts on microbiology and copper are recommending an expanded use of the metal to reduce the virus’s spread. So might copper be incorporated into the construction of masks, the universally accepted virus-fighting personal item? That’s what Jing Zhang of the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI and a team of researchers are doing, using a copper coating on 3-D-printed plastic filters to create more-efficient masks and respirators.”
WLNS: FEMA to stop paying for certain PPE for schools and elections agencies
WLNS: FEMA to stop paying for certain PPE for schools and elections agencies. “The interim policy, which goes into effect September 15, follows what local officials from around the country have said they were told in recent calls with FEMA: that many of the masks, respirators and sanitizing supplies that continue to be key for coronavirus prevention will only be covered for reimbursement when used specifically for emergency response. Instead, under most circumstances, the agency will regard these items as non-emergency supplies for schools and many other local institutions.”
Phys .org: Restoring the filtration efficiency of N95 masks after they have been cleaned
Phys .org: Restoring the filtration efficiency of N95 masks after they have been cleaned. “In the journal Physics of Fluids, researchers from India’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Israel’s Technion-IIT share a method to restore the filtration efficiency of N95 masks to out-of-box levels—as long as the mask is not structurally compromised.”
BBC: Nigerian men arrested over German PPE ‘scam’
BBC: Nigerian men arrested over German PPE ‘scam’. “Two Nigerian men have been arrested for allegedly scamming a German state that tried to buy 2.3m euros (£2m) of personal protective equipment (PPE). Nigerian police say they cloned the website of a Dutch company to obtain an order from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. When the PPE didn’t show up, a state government representative visited the company’s offices in the Netherlands.”
CBC: 3M to make critical N95 masks at Brockville, Ont., plant
CBC: 3M to make critical N95 masks at Brockville, Ont., plant. “The federal and Ontario governments have convinced manufacturing giant 3M to start making N95 respirator masks at its plant in Brockville, Ont., a move that will give Canada a domestic supply of critical personal protective equipment, CBC News has learned.”
Kaiser Health News: As Georgia Reopened, Officials Knew of Severe Shortage of PPE for Health Workers
Kaiser Health News: As Georgia Reopened, Officials Knew of Severe Shortage of PPE for Health Workers. “As the coronavirus crisis deepened in April, Georgia officials circulated documents showing that to get through the next month, the state would need millions more masks, gowns and other supplies than it had on hand. The projections, obtained by KHN and other organizations in response to public records requests, provide one of the clearest pictures of the severe PPE deficits states confronted while thousands fell ill from rising COVID-19 cases, putting health workers at risk.”
Politico: Masks, surgical gowns, testing supplies on FDA shortage list
Politico: Masks, surgical gowns, testing supplies on FDA shortage list. “Surgical gowns, gloves, masks, certain ventilators and various testing supplies needed to respond to the coronavirus pandemic are on the FDA’s first-ever list of medical devices in shortage. The agency is not disclosing who makes any of the devices on the list, which it released [August 14], because that ‘will adversely affect the public health by increasing the potential for hoarding or other disruptions.’ Instead, the agency has released the product codes of devices in shortage.”