By Engr. Edgar Mana-ay
Wearing of face mask in public is our most important deterrent against the spread of COVID-19. Compared with other countries, South Korea and Japan have minimized the spread of the virus because even before the pandemic, many of its citizens have formed the habit of wearing face masks in public, thus when the order from the government came for everybody to wear face masks, this was followed by all citizens without complaint.
Because of financial constraints, most Filipinos make their own mask. But even the best homemade masks, studies shows, can filter only 65% of particulates that could be carrying the coronavirus.
In a study completed by Smart Air Filter Company, they tested 10 different face mask materials. The materials included things like T-shirt, dish towels and pillowcases which was one of the worst performers, only filtering 57% of airborne materials. My wife makes a lot of face masks using pillowcases!
T-shirt materials were slightly better at 70%. But what they didn’t test, which is absolutely critical, is the fit of the mask material. If you’re making your own mask, you must CREATE AN AIRTIGHT section around the edges of the mask. If you’ve tried to make masks at home, you know how hard it is to do so. It’s nearly impossible to make masks at home that doesn’t leave a gap around the face. The law of physics says that most of your inhaled air will come through those gaps, the points of least resistance to airflow!
It’s better to use an air tight-fitting engineered mask for maximum filtering capacity. When this writer came home from Houston middle of February, my nurse daughter in law provided me with 10 pcs. standard N95 masks manufactured by 3M, so I must wash and reuse it again because of the prolonged pandemic but it is worn out after 2 washes. I have exhausted my “orig” mask and now am using a homemade mask sewn by my wife. After reading this, we are supposed to use masks of N95 standards which is very expensive, but again because of financial constraints, we cannot do it. Of course, you have heard of the N95 masks. It’s all over the news as health care professionals scramble to get enough of them while treating coronavirus patients. A disposable N95 mask costs $45 (P2,250 each!) and my nurse granddaughter assigned to the COVID ICU section in Houston Methodist Hospital uses as many as one dozen in her shift! She also gets a swab weekly for PCR test and whose result is known within 24 hours! So, imagine the number of N95 masks thrown daily after one use in rich countries like the US, so that we in the Philippines cannot avail of it anymore. Tyaga na lang kita sa tinahi nga ponda!
As we loosen quarantine control to let people move freely in order to revive our economy, crowd disinfection in malls, supermarkets, public markets and government offices (LTO, BIR, City Hall, etc.) is a vital concern. The sanitation procedure in one mall in Ungka, Pavia is very commendable for it involved orderly washing of hands with soap, followed by an air drier, then a swish of alcohol to the hands by the guard before one enters the mall. Well this is as good as we can get.
In Israel they have designed a “disinfection tunnel” for entrances in public places like malls, sports stadiums, bus and train stations. The plastic sheet tunnel is equipped with an automated aerosol spray system which quickly disinfects individuals from head to toe including clothes and potentially contaminated belongings. The walk-through tunnel sprays a patented tap water-based, environmentally friendly disinfectant, using electro-chemical technology, proven to powerfully eliminate bacteria and viruses including microbes from the coronavirus family.
The key to this is the disinfectant, which is 100 times more effective than the common alcohol that we are using. This substance is also unstable, meaning it will not stay long in bodies and belongings but will eventually evaporate and more friendly to the environment. This is so innovative that President Putin of Russia copied it, installed it at the kremlin entrance before one can have an audience with him.
Recently we are seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases in areas that started to ease the lockdown primarily in the US (Florida and Texas) where the Americans are the most difficult people to limit or curtail their freedom of movement. In this pre-vaccine period, re-opening in stages to restart the economy is a very difficult and ugly decision for Mayor Trenas and Governor Defensor. What is that acceptable public health consequences (to be morbid about it; the number of illnesses and death) that we can tolerate to get people back to work so they can pay the rent and feed their families. A phased and cautious re-opening should be guided by science and data combined with the usual policy on social distancing, wearing of face masks guidelines plus an increase in daily testing which sad to say the city and province have a very limited capability.
Government policies matter but what matters most is the personal behavior and discipline of the people. If the public view the phased opening as a kind of social ease, that things are ok, that they can now party just like that recent swimming party in a hotel and ease on face mask wearing and social distancing, then a second wave of mortality due to the coronavirus is sure to come. We can never be complacent with the invincible enemy just lurking in the corner, therefore discipline is the most important trait needed at these coronavirus times.
For according to Bernard Baruch, American financier (1870-1965): The greatest blessings of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
