Mask Cleaning Operation Gets Underway

Twenty workers at a Wooster Square factory have started cleaning N95 masks so that three dozen hospitals, and counting, from throughout the region can reuse the critical protective equipment as they treat patients with Covid-19.

On Wednesday morning, the Ohio-based applied science research and development organization Battelle formally began the mass mask-cleaning operation out of a state-owned warehouse at 424 Chapel St.

That site was last used by the state Department of Transportation as a staging ground during the construction of the Q Bridge.

The cavernous industrial space on the Wooster Square/Mill River border has now been filled with four of Battelle’s Critical Care Decontamination Units.

According to Battelle Vice President of Government Affairs Jeff Rose (pictured at top of article), each unit has the capacity to clean 5,000 N95 respirator masks per cycle, and a total of 20,000 masks over the course of a day, through the deployment of vaporized hydrogen peroxide. With four units on site, that means the Chapel Street facility can clean a total of 80,000 masks a day when operating at full capacity.

Rose also said each mask can be cleaned and safely reused upwards of 20 times thanks to this decontamination innovation.

“This is really a buffer to try to help before we can get the supply chain up so we can have additional N95 masks,” he said during a Wednesday morning press conference in the warehouse’s parking lot alongside Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and Mayor Justin Elicker.

“This is American ingenuity at its best,” Blumenthal (pictured) said about the mask cleaning technology.

However, he agreed, it is only an interim solution for the international supply chain crunch around personal protective equipment.

“This kind of cleaning, decontamination measure is absolutely a stop gap until we manufacture what’s really needed, using the Defense Production Act,” he said.

“The decontamination is no substitute for manufacturing more of these masks.” He pledged to keep up the pressure on President Donald Trump to exercise that act and order private companies to manufacture en masse the protective equipment that health care workers and first responders so desperately need.

Earlier in April, Battelle landed a six-month, $415 million contract with the federal Department of Defense to set up 60 such decontamination units throughout the country.

Rose said that the New Haven operation is the seventh such facility that Battelle has set up so far. He said that the company has already signed on nearly 40 hospitals and health care facilities from Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts to use the Chapel Street service.

And he said the cleaning work comes free of cost for hospitals and other clients, thanks to the federal grant that is paying for this work.

Rose said that the science behind the cleaning itself is relatively simple.

Battelle workers will pick up N95 respirators from hospitals throughout the region and transport them to Chapel Street.

The masks will then be placed inside large decontamination unit pods, which are subsequently filled with vaporized hydrogen peroxide.

The masks stay in that solution for roughly two-and-a-half hours. Then Battelle workers degas the chamber, let the masks dry, and redistribute them to the original hospitals.

He said that Battelle first started doing research into this decontamination technology through a contract with the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) soon after the 2003 SARS epidemic. The company published its research in 2016 on how best to clean N95 respirators so that they can be safely reused during a subsequent pandemic.

When the novel coronavirus hit, Battelle realized the need for clean PPE. He reached out to the federal government to get a contract to ramp up their work.

“Testing and masks. Testing and masks. Testing and masks,” Lamont (pictured) said during the 20-minute press conference. Want to get Connecticut’s economy open again and people safely back at work? he asked. The best way to do that is by making sure that as many people as possible are tested for the virus, so that the public and health care workers know who has it, who needs to quarantine, and who needs to self-isolate.

And in order to conduct those tests en masse, and in order to treat those who have fallen sick, he said, clinicians need adequate supplies of protective equipment. Like N95 masks.

“If we can’t test, if we can’t have masks or PPE, then we are not going to bring this pandemic under control,” said DeLauro (pictured).

“You cannot be sure about opening up any part of our country unless you are doing enough testing,” added Murphy (pictured).

And in order to do adequate testing, there must be adequate supplies of clean and safe masks.

“We are playing catch up. But we are catching up, and that is what’s important. We are being innovative.”

“This site is a very proactive way to make sure that we are keeping our health care workers healthy and safe by cleaning PPE and returning them as quickly as possible,” said Elicker.

Rose said that the Chapel Street site plans to clean roughly 100 masks Wednesday. It plans to ramp up its decontamination work to tens of thousands of masks a day as more and more hospitals sign on.