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Method Article
An illustrated step-by-step guide to establish a disinfection facility for reuse of personal protective equipment
Vikram Saini
Department of Biotechnology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110029, India, and Biosafety Laboratory-3, Centralized Core Research Facility (CCRF), All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110029, India
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0258-2871
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This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
COVID-19 pandemic has created unforeseen public health challenges including the disruption of a steady supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers (HCWs). Several approaches have been evaluated for safe disinfection of used PPEs to allow their selective reuse. We have recently shown that Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide (VHP) is a safe, easy-to-scale up, economical and environment friendly method to disinfect PPE (coveralls, N-95 masks and face-shields) without compromising their quality and integrity even after repeated cycles of disinfection (Saini et al., 2020). Based on this method, we have operationalized a PPE disinfection research facility at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, a tertiary care medical centre in India. Considering the immense potential of this approach, we have been repeatedly approached by various hospitals to provide a detailed standard operating guideline to run such a facility. Herein, we present a step-by-step illustrative guide that we believe would be helpful to operationalize a PPE disinfection facility at health care settings. This guide incorporates elements and steps of biosafety necessary to handle used PPE during COVID-19 settings and can be adapted for various methods of PPE disinfection, and various pathogens.
Keywords
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Disinfection facility, COVID-19, biosafety, vapourized hydrogen peroxide (VHP)
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Due to technical limitations, Tables 1-2 can be found in the Supplemental files section.
This is a list of supplementary files associated with this preprint. Click to download.
- Table1.jpg
Recommended PPE gear for the healthcare personnel at each step of disinfection.
- Table2.jpg
Setting of cycle time and H2O2 volume according to the room size.
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Method Article
An illustrated step-by-step guide to establish a disinfection facility for reuse of personal protective equipment
Vikram Saini
Department of Biotechnology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110029, India, and Biosafety Laboratory-3, Centralized Core Research Facility (CCRF), All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110029, India
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0258-2871
Badges
Prescreen
This manuscript passed our Prescreen assessment
Complete author information
Appropriate declaration statements
Potential risks to human health
Prescreen
History
CURRENT STATUS: Posted
Version 1
Posted 20 Aug, 2020
No community comments so far
Metrics
Comments: 0
HTML Views: ...
Subject Areas
Biological techniques
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
COVID-19 pandemic has created unforeseen public health challenges including the disruption of a steady supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers (HCWs). Several approaches have been evaluated for safe disinfection of used PPEs to allow their selective reuse. We have recently shown that Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide (VHP) is a safe, easy-to-scale up, economical and environment friendly method to disinfect PPE (coveralls, N-95 masks and face-shields) without compromising their quality and integrity even after repeated cycles of disinfection (Saini et al., 2020). Based on this method, we have operationalized a PPE disinfection research facility at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, a tertiary care medical centre in India. Considering the immense potential of this approach, we have been repeatedly approached by various hospitals to provide a detailed standard operating guideline to run such a facility. Herein, we present a step-by-step illustrative guide that we believe would be helpful to operationalize a PPE disinfection facility at health care settings. This guide incorporates elements and steps of biosafety necessary to handle used PPE during COVID-19 settings and can be adapted for various methods of PPE disinfection, and various pathogens.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Due to technical limitations, Tables 1-2 can be found in the Supplemental files section.