Personal Protective Equipments (PPE) and facemasks manufactured in Pakistan are not up to the mark and people are using it with a false feeling to control the pandemic, revealed by a study conducted by the National Textile University (NTU) Faisalabad. NTU spokesman said today that the university collected different samples of facemasks and evaluated its quality in its state-of-the-art textile laboratory. The results of the study showed that particle filtration efficiency of most of the facemasks is below the required level of 95% as these could not filter 0.3 micrometer particles. Participle filtration efficiency is one of the fundamental characteristics that shows the suitability of the facemasks for a given application and environment. In order to be suitable for COVID-19 application, the face masks are required to block at least 95% of participles of 0.3 micrometers. This means most of the surgical masks used even by the healthcare workers do not provide the required protection from the coronavirus, he added. He further said that findings of the study also suggested that most facemasks evaluated to provide good protection against blood splashes during surgical and other procedures carried out by the medical staff.
As regards breathing resistance of the facemasks, it was found to be quite low due to the large pores that do not resist the flow of air or ultrafine participles during breathing, either through nose or mouth. The major finding of NTU study is that the vast majority of surgical facemasks is only expected to help protect against larger droplets or particles and are not designed to protect the wearers from ultrafine participles and COVID-19 in the form of tiny aerosol particles.
Furthermore, the vast majority of surgical face masks available in the market are not produced according to the required international safety standard. Hence, they are not fit for the purpose to provide protection against the deadly COVID-19. Wearing low-quality masks, as observed in the study, does not provide the required protection to the wearers. In fact, these low-quality facemasks may be a major cause of the spread of coronavirus as they provide very little protection but give a false sense of protection, he said. The study has suggested that the government must encourage and support the industry to look into this issue seriously by developing the appropriate policies and standards in addition to extending financial incentives so that the industry could adopt new technologies for the development and production of high-quality PPEs, the spokesman suggested.
