Bye-bye N95?
“From our perspective, our goal with the mask challenge was not to replace the N95 respirator,” Dr. Lippold says. N95 masks, which NIOSH certifies, are valuable and protect people in high-risk settings. “With the mask challenge, our goal was really to provide the public with a comparable alternative that really meets their specific level of risk.” Working in a health care setting carries a different risk, she says, than going to the grocery store.
“A common complaint with the N95 is that they are very uncomfortable.” It’s a major barrier to compliance, “and we wanted to address that gap. We didn’t directly compare [the entries] to an N95,” she says, although their testing was similar to NIOSH’s. A number of finalists say they will pursue NIOSH approval, she says.
Meanwhile, some of the finalists’ masks are for sale. Air Flo Labs, for instance, has its Flo Mask Pro for sale online, noting that BARDA allowed it to release the test results from NIOSH and NIST.
Getting from 1,500 to 10
In the first phase of the challenge, Dr. Lippold says, “the goal was to engage as wide an audience as possible.” With the second phase, the bar was set a bit higher. Instead of just submitting ideas on paper, companies had to submit prototypes for lab testing. “We got about 80 submissions,” she says.
Those 80 were whittled down to 10 finalists. Teams had sent prototypes, and experts, including those from NIOSH and NIST, rated them, sometimes looking at multiple copies of the masks. Experts looked at how well the masks filtered the air, how breathable they were, and other data. Once the feedback was given to the mask companies, they entered a redesign period. “Scientists can take this data and basically make these prototypes better,” Dr. Lippold says.
The final round of testing will be in September, and the winners will be announced in the fall. The opportunity allowed companies to have their products go through testing they might not otherwise have been able to get, she says.
A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.