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Types of Face Masks – Safety Masks Designed for Front Line Medical Work

08 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics, Covid-19, Face Masks, NHS

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Face Masks, Medical Respirators, NHS, Politics

This is Part Two of a set of posts called ‘Wearing a Face Mask During a Pandemic’.

Masks designed to keep the wearer safe from the virus as well as to prevent virus spread:

4aaa-frontline-medical-work-529

Frontline medical work during the Covid pandemic – The Times

It has to be said, that although we all want to keep our community safe and not spread the virus among it, most people researching face masks are looking for ways to keep themselves safe from the virus as well, because they don’t want to rely entirely upon everyone else wearing a mask (or wearing a mask effectively) to help protect them.

Many will look at the following masks for the best safety options, but as you will see, they will be unobtainable for most of the public and they have their drawbacks too:

Respirator Masks Worn in Hospitals:

Respirator Masks are primarily for medical staff working in hospitals, in close contact with patients who have infectious diseases, but are now being recommended for frontine social care workers also:

ffp2-and-ffp3-medical-mask

FFP2 and FFP3 Medical Respirators

The FFP3 respirator (Europe and UK) (and sometimes the FFP2 Respirator), and the N95, N99, and N100 respirators (US) should be worn by doctors, nurses and anyone working in close contact with a Covid-19 patient.

n95-and-n99-masks

N95 and N99 Medical Respirators

These masks are designed to filter out extremely tiny microscopic particles (size 0.3 Microns) of virus as follows:

  • A tight-fitting FFP2 (Europe and UK) mask should filter out around 94% of virus particles.
  • A tight-fitting FFP3 (Europe and UK) mask should filter out 99%+ of virus particles.
  • A tight-fitting N95 (US) mask should filter out at least 95% of virus particles.
  • A tight-fitting N99 (US) mask should filter out 99% of virus particles.
  • A tight-fitting N100 (US) mask should filter out 99.7% of virus particles.
6b-n100-respirator-mask-500

N100 Medical Respirator Mask

Other countries have similar categories for medical masks. For instance, the Chinese system is KN95 (Filters out up to 95% of 0.3 Microns particles) and above.

Because these top quality protection masks work on the basis of keeping microscopic virus particles out, they need a tight seal with the face. So all of the above respirator masks must be chosen to fit the person wearing them and medical staff should be measured regularly to ensure they continue to have the best fit.

The disadvantage to this is that these masks can be pretty uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time.

Even though the majority of these masks have valves to help with breathing, some medical staff still find the masks are sealed in so tight that it makes their breathing laboured, they feel ‘headachey’, and some wearers experience a strong feeling of claustrophobia.

marks-from-respirator-masks

‘Marks for Heroes’ Sore marks left by medical respirators – Xinhua Net

And then there are the sore marks which a tight medical respirator leaves on the face. These masks are not at all comfortable.

As with surgical masks, medical respirator masks are also disposable (although, with the acute shortage of top quality respirator masks, some hospitals are recommending that their staff clean and sterilise these masks to be worn at least twice).

Can the general public wear medical level respirator masks?

Because there is a worldwide shortage of medical level respirator masks, it is only fair that front line medical and social care staff have access to them before the general public.

Plus, these masks are very expensive for a member of the public to buy. For example you can purchase a FFP3 respirator mask on eBay, but a good quality (and in date) one will cost you around £35-50 minimum.

And remember that these masks are meant to be worn once, so planning to wear a good quality respirator mask regularly would be a very expensive exercise.

However, some people do buy single FFP3 masks for emergency use (an urgent hospital visit to see a relative, for example).

All that being said, you can purchase some relatively inexpensive Chinese-made KN95 disposable masks on eBay, Amazon, etc:

KN95 Masks from China:

Like the medical respirator masks above, KN95 face masks are also disposable. They are usually almost circular in shape, with a snug fit all around and a centre seam pointing outwards (giving a cone shape). This gives the wearer lots of inside space for their mouth and nose and, with the help of an adjustable nose bar, they stay in place well, even when the wearer is talking.

8-kn95-face-mask_side-cone-shape-500

KN95 Mask, showing the cone shape

As these masks are made mainly in China, they are made to Chinese specifications.

They do not fit UK or US criteria for protection (for instance, KN95 masks often have elastic ear loops, while N95 and FFP3 masks will usually have adjustable ties to enable a better fit), but good ones will adhere to Chinese safety specifications, which in these times of PPE shortages, many will find acceptable.

At the time of typing, these masks retail at around £2-£4 per mask without a respirator valve, and around £8 to £10 per mask with a respirator valve.

They vary in design and quality and I’m afraid it usually relies upon paying your money and taking a chance. Whether that is worth it is up to you.

Some KN95 masks are not well made. Most of them are mass-produced. But nevertheless, some are excellent for the job required. The good ones will fit well, are comfortable to wear, and probably provide a very reasonable level of protection (as reasonable as you can get with a mask which is not specifically measured to fit you).

KN95 masks also vary between 3 ply and 5 ply – These masks have layers of material – to block, to filter and for comfort. 4 and 5 ply masks will have extra filter layers.

Some also have respirator valves like the European, UK and US respirator masks (the valves should expel moist air without letting particles in – this helps prevent the inner mask getting wet from your breath).

As an aside, valves on facemasks worn by the public are frowned upon by some US sources and may even eventually be banned for general use. This is because it is thought that expelling air from inside a mask means also expelling particles of virus into the surrounding atmosphere- and this is of course the opposite result to that required when asking the public to wear masks (see Note 1).

But most KN95 masks to purchase online do not have respirator valves. They are, however, reasonably light to wear, have room inside to breath, and most people would have no trouble wearing them without a break for up to 4 hours if required (for a hospital visit, a long trip to the shops, for part of the working day in a busy office, etc).

7-kn95-3-500

A popular KN95 face mask design

As someone who has purchased and worn KN95 masks on a couple of occasions, I personally would say they are worth the outlay when you want a light, comfortable, reasonably reliable mask to wear in a crowded space to give you a good measure of protection as well as to protect others.

But don’t rely on KN95 masks entirely. They are not UK or US medical grade. Social distancing is vital whenever possible when wearing a KN95 mask, as is frequently washing your hands.

In any case, even if you choose to buy some KN95 masks on eBay or elsewhere, you will probably be looking for other masks to top up the number of masks you may need to wear every day, especially as we could be wearing face masks more and more over the following months.

And many of you will be looking for the money-saving value of a mask which you can safely wear, wash, and wear again.

These will be discussed in the next post.

————————————————

Note 1: Why your N95 mask could endanger others: https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/Why-your-N95-mask-could-endanger-others-15246318.php

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Types of Face Mask – Surgical Masks

07 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics, Covid-19, Face Masks, NHS

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Tags

Coronavirus, Face Masks, NHS, Surgical Masks

This is Part One of a set of posts called ‘Wearing a Face Mask During a Pandemic’. And it tells you all about Surgical Masks.

Surgical Masks:

1a-face-masks-korean-wedding-529

Surgical Face masks at a Korean wedding – From Commisceo Global

When you watch TV or social media and see crowds or groups of people from countries which are struggling with Covid-19, many of them will be wearing surgical masks.

Surgical masks are disposable, designed for wearing once only. Most will have a light blue/turquoise outer (waterproof) layer, with 2 further layers in white – the middle layer acts as the filter to large droplets which have traversed the waterproof layer, and the inner layer is the comfort fit for your face which also soaks up any excess moisture.

1-surgical-mask -medical-ii-500

Medical grade surgical mask fastened with ties

Surgical masks are also recognisable for their pleats. The pleats ensure that the mask is narrow enough to fit the side of the face, while expanding to be wide enough at the centre to cover your face from bridge of nose to under the chin.

Surgical masks are popular because they are light, relatively inexpensive, and usually comfortable to wear.

The combination of materials used in making surgical masks have also been tested to filter out up to 95% of 3.0 Microns size particles (usually classed as Bacteria Filtration), which is extremely helpful in a range of medical settings.

However, those filter calculations were taken by looking at the fabric used, not the way the mask fits.

Surgical masks can fit comfortably on the face and an inbuilt, moldable nose bar makes them a good fit across the nose.

2-surgical-mask-medical-529

Medical grade surgical mask, showing fit across nose and at sides

However, surgical masks often ‘gap’ at the sides, which means that there is a risk of  particles getting into the sides of the mask. With this in mind, a loose fitting surgical mask will not live up to that 95% Bacteria Filtration in a close up situation. It could even slip down as low as 50% maximum. But this will depend upon how the mask fits the individual wearer, because these masks are usually one size fits all.

There is also discussion on the size of virus droplets, as surgical masks are good filters for large (3.0 Microns) bacterial droplets, but not necessarily as good at filtering out micro-sized (0.3 Microns) virus particles which make up part of the Covid-19 viral load.

Research is still ongoing here though, as there is uncertaintly as to the nature of the micro particles in relation to the larger droplets. For example, if most of the micro particles are still part of the larger droplet when they land on the mask, a significant amount of them may be filtered out too – but no one, as yet, knows for sure. However, this makes another article and I’ll leave that one to an expert :).

Nevertheless, surgical masks are excellent at keeping virus particles in.

So, if a Covid-19 sufferer coughs or sneezes while wearing a surgical mask (or even sheds virus particles as they talk), most of these virus particles should remain in the mask, rather than being expelled into the surrounding atmosphere.

Thus the argument goes that if we all wore surgical masks, cross infection would go down dramatically.

This is because there may be many people walking around in public who have Covid-19 but are pre-symptomatic or even asymptomatic, so they look, sound and feel perfectly fine, but may still be shedding the virus. If they had to wear a surgical mask, this could help stop the spread of the virus.

And of course, surgical masks go some way to protect those sharing space with Covid-19 patients, when the patient wears the surgical mask. The mask prevents a significant proportion of virus spread getting out into the surrounding atmosphere.

So surgical masks definitely have their uses. And if we all wore them, along with social distancing and hand washing measures, they would go a long way to keeping us safe.

Wearing of surgical masks by the general public

Several countries encourage the wearing of surgical masks by the population. In Spain, for example, these masks are handed out in public transport stations and even sent to citizens by post.

However, the UK and the US appear to have a serious shortage of surgical masks to be worn by health and social care workers, therefore the Government request is that surgical masks have to be saved for health and social care staff only.

Nevertheless, face masks described as and looking like surgical masks are on sale to the general public, online, and from some local shops, so you may well see many people wearing surgical masks while shopping, working, and travelling on public transport.

How is this possible?

3-surgical-mask-ear-loops-1-500

Surgical style face masks which can be purchased online

What often happens is that these masks are made in the same way and with the same materials as the surgical masks used in hospitals. They are said to be tested to the standard of 95% Bacteria Filtration, but have, for example, elastic ear fittings rather than tie head fittings. They may also vary in size to those worn by staff in hospitals.

Some of these masks were originally designed to be used by service workers, such as hairdressers and beauticians, in food preparation, and even in delicate manufacturing processes, and a host of other work situations. But now these masks are being made in their millions to be worn as a form of protection during the pandemic.

And now that the rush by sellers to substantially overprice masks for sale has been largely outlawed, these surgical style masks are quite a reasonable purchase – for example, at time of writing you can purchase a box of 50 for around £10 on eBay or Amazon. So they are still more expensive than they were before the pandemic, but obtainable by many nevertheless, especially to share between friends, family and work colleagues.

4-surgical-mask-with-elastic-ear-loops-500

Surgical style mask with elastic ear loops for sale online

You may also see some healthcare workers wearing this type of surgical mask, especially in social care, where lack of PPE has left visiting care workers and care home managers having to purchase their own protective wear.

The UK Government’s recommendation is to discourage the wearing of surgical masks by the general public and to encourage the wearing of ‘cloth face covers’ which I’ll discuss more in a later part of this study. But, like other examples of limited Government knowledge, the actual characterisation of what exactly is a surgical mask, compared with the cheaper version purchased online, has left some confusion.

Suffice to say that many of the UK public are wearing these ‘surgical mask’ type face masks and will most probably continue to do so, because they do provide a reasonably effective, recognisable, and relatively comfortable answer to the growing need to wear a face mask.


In the next post, I will be talking about the masks designed to keep us safe as individuals as well as prevent the spread of the virus.

NHS Crisis We Saw It Coming And Now Labour Must Stop It.

08 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, NHS, Politics

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Tags

British Politics, Jeremy Corbyn, NHS, NHS Crisis, Tories

May 2015 seems an awful long way away now, so much has happened.
But I remember making a blog post near the General Election saying that, despite some misgivings on some of the policies put forward by the Labour Party that year (and set out on that terrible ‘headstone’…), I would be voting Labour with one main objective in mind – to Save Our NHS.

I truly feared for our NHS under a Tory government and I just couldn’t understand why so many people couldn’t see this too.

Well, my fears about the Tories have come true – they are deliberately dismantling our NHS and allowing it to fail.
I would guess that their solution would be to sell it all off (or give it away as they have done recently) to private investors, while assuring us that this will be best for us and ‘the only way’, and that plans will be set up so that we can all get private insurance…

So I have to agree with Devutopia here:

should-have-voted-labour

And I could just say ‘I told you so’ at this point, to all those Tory voters (or those whose votes split the left of centre vote) who are now complaining about not being able to see a GP or about ever longer waiting lists and waits at A&E.

But that would be pointless and would solve nothing.

Especially when the Labour Party, of late, has been struggling within itself rather than getting on and opposing the Tories and UKIP and exposing them for the parasites they are at every opportunity.

Now I’m a member of the Labour Party (and have been since summer 2015) and I am looking to my party to hold this government to account – to show the public the Tory lies and to offer us all a solution that will not involve further privatisation (in fact, ideally the only way this will work is if the whole lot comes back completely into public ownership).

And I’m looking for everyone in the Labour Party to get over their back stabbing and petty squabbles and to concentrate on doing something which is absolutely vital for all of us – that the Labour Party as a whole gets together and fights with everything its got to save our Free and public NHS.

I know it won’t be easy. I would be a fool if I didn’t realise that the establishment in general will do everything it can to belittle and denigrate Labour now that it has a true democratic socialist as leader.

But Labour brought us the NHS and Labour needs to be getting this across at every opportunity and demonstrating that they have real solutions and alternatives for Tory deliberate mismanagement.

So, I guess this is not so much sad remembrance of why this is happening now and why we have a true Humanitarian #NHSCrisis, but a plea to everyone in the Labour Party – left, centre and right (and all bits in between) to come together for the sake of Our NHS.

Because if Labour cannot do this then there really is no hope for any of us.

Why We Must Support Junior Doctors And Student Nurses In Their Struggle

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics, Jeremy Corbyn, NHS

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Tags

British Politics, Junior Doctors, NHS, Nurses Bursaries

It was good to see that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell gave their full support to the Junior Doctors’ Strike last Tuesday. Not only was this the first time in my memory that a Labour Leader and Labour Shadow Chancellor had openly and unequivocally supported a strike, but it was, without doubt, the correct thing to do.

The fight by Junior Doctors for fair treatment at work and by nurses and all NHS workers to retain their bursaries is not only their fight; it is ours too.

Of course, this is about wages, and working hours, and payment for training, but it is also very much about patient safety. And at the heart of the struggle is the fight for something we all hold dear: our Free National Health Service.

Without doctors and nurses we would not have a health service, and without the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and all health support workers and practitioners, our NHS would certainly not be free.

And the issue of ‘free’ is important when we look at the creeping privatisation of our NHS and how it affects not only doctors and nurses, but all of us.

The NHS Privatisation plan:

There are 3 main factors to this:

Devolution
Soon there will no longer be a ‘national’ health service.
This has already happened in Manchester, and very soon we will have ‘regional health services’ all over the UK, with NHS funding subsumed within local authority funding. And we all know what has happened to local authority funding…it has been cut, and cut again!

Privatisation
The Private Finance Initiative or ‘PFI’:
Since 1992, most large scale public capital investment in the UK has used PFI procurement, whereby a consortium of investment banks, builders, and service contractors raises the finance, and designs, builds, and operates the facilities for the public authority through a project company

Now on the surface, this sounds good – after all, it appears that nothing has been sold off and that the private sector is contributing to the NHS.

But that of course is not the case….

Through the PFI scheme private companies have built NHS hospitals and leased them back to the NHS. They also run support services as part of these contracts. This has of course been highly profitable for the companies involved, otherwise the scheme would not have worked, but it is now becoming crystal clear that the PFI model offers very poor value and is, in fact, draining our NHS of desperately-needed funds.

A number of NHS hospitals are struggling to cope with the cost of meeting their PFI debts. South London Healthcare Trust was the first to be put into administration after being put on a growing list of trusts burdened with PFI debt.

In the early 1990s, hospitals paid no charge on their land, buildings and assets, but today many PFI-run hospitals are paying a substantial percentage to PFI investers just to keep going. And the percentage they pay is rising all the time. At the moment, when new government money is injected into the NHS, most of it goes directly to private investors because of PFI.

We are told that we can no longer afford to pay for universal healthcare, but that simply wouldn’t be true, if only we stopped using NHS funds to pay back the banks and other financiers who control the PFIs.

The Five Year Forward View:
On 1st April 2014, NHS England’s new chief executive, Simon Stevens, laid out his plans for the NHS, and on the surface they sounded positive enough. For example, he talked about:

“Unleashing the passion and drive of the million plus frontline NHS staff who are devoting their professional lives to caring.”

The problem was, that Stevens had a different idea of how to ‘unleash that passion’ than most users of the NHS would have wanted to hear.

By October, 2014, Stevens had published his ‘5 Year forward Plan’; a 39-page report which sets out ways the NHS in England needs to change over the next five years to ensure (and I quote) “it remains affordable in the face of increasing demand and finance pressures.”

On the surface, this ‘plan’ was welcomed by members of the NHS, as it outlined a way of dealing with patient care to fit a more modern age.

However, it has now become apparent that the ‘5 year forward plan’ was based more on business strategy than on patient need (In fact, when talking about his plan, Stevens described it as ‘NHS England’s Business plan’, first and foremost).

One of Steven’s most controversial measures is the call for more ‘super hospitals’, which are, no doubt, more cost-effective in a business sense, but are in actual fact dangerous for some patients living in rural areas, whose access to hospital emergency care and follow-on care will be severely restricted (especially when we take note of cuts to our ambulance services).

But that’s just one example of the problems with this ‘5 year plan’.

The main problem is that it has been designed with profitabilty in mind, rather than patient need.

Now, when you combine these 3 strategies – Devolution, Privatisation, and the ‘5 year forward plan’, you begin to see how much our Free and Public National Health Service is being put under pressure and is already being privatised.

Add to that the ‘profitability factor’, so beloved by PFI investers and by Stevens, and you see where the perceived need to change Junior Doctors’ contracts and to end Nurse’s Bursaries come in. Wages and personel costs being a huge part of the cost of any large ‘enterprise’, something has to be done about them to make them more ‘affordable’ for private investors.

The present scheme of work and pay for Junior doctors is not profitable enough when considered as part of a business plan for investors, and neither of course are bursaries for training NHS staff.

When you take all these things together, it becomes clear that our NHS is not only under threat of privatisation; it is already being privatised.

And this is why it is so important that we all support the junior doctors, student nurses, and in fact all NHS and health care workers.

We may not have access to the boardrooms of private companies, or be able to take part in meetings of private investment consortiums. But we can sure as hell let this government know that we know what they are doing, and that we intend to make them stop doing it!

So, we need to support our Junior Doctors and we need to support our Student Nurses and all NHS workers hoping to train within a free NHS.

Their fight is a fight that all workers and students are having to make – for fair treatment at work; for a living wage; and for free education.

If we as workers let Jeremy Hunt force the junior doctors to sign up to a new contract, how can we expect this Government to be fair to us when we call for decent wages and safe working conditions?

If we as students let this government force all health care workers to pay for their training, we are effectively saying that it is okay to pay for education, and we are therefore giving up the right to call for an end to student loans and for the right to free education for all.

And, if we, as users of the NHS, do not support Junior Doctors and Student Nurses in their fight for fair treatment by Mr Hunt, we are effectively saying “It’s okay Mr Hunt – you go ahead and make their services more profitable to the private sector.” And by doing that we would be giving up our right to demand that our NHS is saved from privatisation.

So we must support our junior doctors, our student nurses and all of our NHS workers.

And as for the Tories, we need to tell them in no uncertain terms “get your thieving hands off of our Free and National Health Service!”

Recent Posts

  • Types of Face Masks – Re-Useable Masks You Can Purchase
  • Types of Face Masks – Safety Masks Designed for Front Line Medical Work
  • Types of Face Mask – Surgical Masks
  • Wearing a Face Mask During a Pandemic – Introduction
  • In 2017 Boris Johnson launched group proposing NHS sell-off to US firms after Brexit
  • Labour is Missing Out in The Search Engines
  • The only party for the many not the few
  • Why Labour Is Right to Listen to Leavers as well as Remainers
  • When Strong and Stable is Not Enough
  • NHS Crisis We Saw It Coming And Now Labour Must Stop It.
  • Keep Corbyn
  • Labour and ‘the snoopers charter’
  • Time for Labour Party Members to Speak Out
  • Sorry Nicky, I’m out.
  • Why We Must Support Junior Doctors And Student Nurses In Their Struggle

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