N95 filtering face piece respirators remain effective after extensive reuse during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic
Valeria Fabre, Sara E. Cosgrove, Yea‐Jen Hsu, George Jones, Taylor Helsel, James Bukowski, Mark Sobota, Anna Sick-Samuels, Aaron M. Milstone, Lisa L. Maragakis, Clare Rock
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a critical shortage of N95 respirators. One conservation strategy is having healthcare workers (HCWs) reuse their own N95s. Based on a study in a simulated environment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests limiting the number of reuses to 5 per N95 to ensure an adequate safety margin 3 ; however, such an approach likely leads to discarding clinically effective N95s earlier than necessary. Our goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of reused N95s in a real-world healthcare setting during the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify factors that could be used to proactively identify N95 failure.