Battelle, best known for developing military biohazard protections, on Sunday announced it has received Food and Drug Administration authorization to decontaminate personal protective equipment (PPE) used by healthcare workers treating patients with COVID-19.
The Battelle CCDS Critical Care Decontamination System is capable of decontaminating up to 80,000 respirator masks per system each day using concentrated, vapor phase hydrogen peroxide inside its Ohio plant. The respirator masks are exposed to the validated concentration level for 2.5 hours to decontaminate biological contaminates, including SARS-CoV-2. Battelle CCDS can decontaminate the same respirator mask up to 20 times without degrading the mask’s performance.
“Everybody who has worked on this project shares the same goal of protecting first responders and healthcare workers who are at the front lines of the pandemic,” said Batelle President and CEO Lou Von Thaer.
“This will not only help Ohio’s healthcare workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis, but Battelle will also be helping health care workers in hot spots throughout the country, including New York and Washington state,” said Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R).
Battelle is currently processing N95 respirator masks for OhioHealth and will begin processing respirator masks for three other major systems starting this week. The company plans to set up satellite facilities in other states with hotspots, under the emergency clearance provision.
Other researchers and companies are working feverishly to roll out similar mask reuse strategies.
A team at the Duke Regional Biocontainment Laboratory has decontaminated hundreds of N95 respirators without damage and shared its process online late last week. The researchers have also been using hydrogen peroxide vapor.
Healthcare systems that wish to use Battelle CCDS will collect worn respirator masks daily in accordance with an approved procedure and courier these respirator masks to Battelle CCDS operations as systems come online. The PPE will be labeled with a barcoded serial number for tracking the chain-of-custody throughout the process. This ensures the hospital system receives its own masks back. Each respirator will be marked to show how many times it has been processed.
