ctive equipment for reuse in the fight against COVID-19 which will provide free service to New Mexico’s frontline workers.
Workers in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics and other frontline medical occupations should begin saving unsoiled N95 masks for decontamination right away. Those are the disposable masks that have been in short supply during the crisis and therefore reserved for frontline workers because of their ability to filter out virus-sized particles.
The machine, which can decontaminate up to 83,000 N95 masks per day, will remain in New Mexico for six months. Battelle engineers will run the equipment at no cost to the state or to the agencies using it.
“This is great news for New Mexico and for all our frontline health care workers,” said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. “We now can make sure every one of them has a safe and effective N95 mask every day they come to work.”
Battelle, Ohio-based research and development nonprofit, repurposed an older chemical decontamination technique to decontaminate N95 masks for reuse.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency contracted with Battelle for 60 of the machines and then accepted applications from the states to determine who got them based on need. New Mexico was awarded one on April 22 for six months.
The machine uses concentrated vapor phase hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate thousands of N95 respirators at a time in order for healthcare and other frontline workers to safely reuse them.
The process removes all biological contaminants, including the viruses responsible for SARS and COVID-19. Masks can be decontaminated up to 20 times without degrading their performance.
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