Low-Cost Powered Respirators Allowing Service Businesses to Resume Operation

The ease with which COVID-19 spreads has caused most service businesses, which rely on person-to-person contact, to cease operation. This is causing massive economic damage in many sectors of the economy, including healthcare (e.g. dentists), personal services (e.g. hairdressers), small retailers, repair shops, etc. Furthermore, it is likely that many of these businesses will have to remain closed for many months, leading to many of them not surviving. The businesses that do survive will further face significant consumer fear, and therefore reduced income, for an extended duration after the lock-downs are lifted.

What is urgently needed is technology that will allow most of these businesses to re-open as soon as possible, even at reduced capacity, while simultaneously preventing the spread of COVID-19\. In this project we are rapidly developing a low-cost powered respirator system that will allow service deliverers to be in close proximity to customers with negligible risk of transmission.

Hospital experience has shown that simple face masks, even with face shields, are largely ineffective in close proximity and service providers have to wear full-face masks for effective protection. However, a new development is needed since, in addition to the worldwide shortage of respirators and consumables (i.e. filters), all current respirator systems exhaust the wearers exhaled air directly into the face of the customer. Clearly this only provides protection for the wearer, and not the customer.

The new respirator system would be far cheaper and more viable than distributing tens of millions of full-face respirators and a supply of filters to most businesses and members of the public.