After speaking to members of the biosecurity community, I’ve learned that a big problem in preparing for pandemics is stockpiling personal protective equipment for key workers. During Covid, the distribution of PPE was an absolute shambles in the UK.
PPE like N95 masks have an informal shelf life encouraged by current guidelines, because they degrade. There are no hard and fast rules, but the timeline is usually self regulated by manufacturers to a tune of three to five years. There are many valid reasons to think that PPE should be regularly replaced. For example the electric charge of a mask that stops particles might degrade over time due to humidity (and yes, tools to recharge masks was one of the ideas that I had).
But after reading the literature, I’m starting to think that indeed there are many reasons for degradation, which are not quantified to the level we’d like. It’s unclear what the effects of humidity, temperature, or usage patterns mean for degradation. Nor have there been any serious war-gamey type analysis on the potential cost savings from improving the science.
Add to that the fact that legislation on this is unclear. And so in another (worse) crisis scenario, its still going to be a shit-show.
PPE is expensive. One thing that could make it cheaper for governments to stockpile PPE is being more confident in the science of how long PPE can genuinely be kept for. What if our three year guideline is us just guessing, and it’s actually more like six years? That could mean double cost savings. And what if we find more cost efficient ways to store PPE for longer, or somehow improve the shelf life without much effort?
One suspicion I had is that it’s not actually the quality of the mask that’s the limiting factor on why PPE degrades. Rather, perhaps it’s the straps just getting lose that make the mask ineffective at making a seal around the mask. I’ve been reading some papers to this affect, and maybe coming up with more resilient pandemic stockpiles might just be a matter of finding elastic bands that are more robust.
More to come on this soon!