Virus-Free Air in Hospitals: Are we Crossing the Bridge, to Safe Healthcare for our Families?
Gamma Pulse
Deep Tech company that created KillViD, an air decontamination technology that kills 100% of viruses in a single pass.
To start, I have two seemingly odd survey-type questions to ask. The first one is, going where you're going, would you drive your family over a bridge that states on the road sign preceding it, "This bridge is 99.9999% safe"?
For the purposes of our conversation, I would expect your answer to be, "No, I would not, especially if the bridge declares it is only 99.9999% safe."
Ok, and so now the next question is, would you drive your family to this type of hospital?
Here, I can already guess your answer (which now might also be tinted with a touch of annoyance), "No, no one in their right mind would bring their family to this type of hospital. The remaining 0.0001% chance to become infected is simply not an acceptable risk."
Now the curiosity is this, during COVID, millions flocked to hospitals that had much less than 99.9999% safe air from viruses or bacteria to breathe.
However to examine this strange phenomena, if you agree, I will not focus on the psychology of "the masses" (you probably know about same) and instead focus on the "technical" reasons as to why unsafe air quality in hospitals existed, then (just a year ago) and still does today.
The Dangers of Hospital-Acquired Infections (HAIs)
Getting sick or dying from acquiring another disease while in the hospital is not a far-fetched possibility.
HAIs, also known as Healthcare-Associated Infections, are infections or diseases that a patient did not have at the time of admission but were acquired after being admitted to a hospital.
For example, a study conducted in Australia (early 2020) entitled "The Prevalence of Healthcare-Associated Infections Among Adult Inpatients at Nineteen Large Australian Acute-Care Public Hospitals" found that there were 363 HAIs present in just 273 patients.
This means that patients who went into the hospital hoping to cure one illness, acquired another one! (maybe even two)
Here's another statistic: the Journal of Hospital Infection published a Swedish-led study called "Risk of Hospitalization and Death for Healthcare Workers with COVID-19 in Nine European Countries" found that 8,169 doctors and nurses working in hospitals and or clinics, were hospitalized in nine countries, and many of them died. So by simple extension, it means that worldwide, many tens of thousands of doctors and nurses had the same type of unfortunate experience.
So, why were people, even highly educated doctors and nurses, willing to go to hospitals to be cured and/or work in them, even though the air was of dangerous quality?
Now apart from the "herd instinct" phenomenon ("if everyone is doing it, it must be okay"), the first reason is this, and this may surprise you, unfortunately, everybody thought that the air they were breathing was safe enough.
Regrettably, what many did not know (healthcare workers, hospital patients and visitors) was that 99.9% and even 99.9999% air decontamination is not safe enough air. (as the previous statistics of HAIs show)
So, the question is again raised ad absurdum, why did hospitals, not work to ensure the provision of safe air, just like they work to provide safe needles?
There are two reasons. But before we give them, let's start with a premise: it's not because hospitals lacked funds. We saw how quickly billions of dollars and euros were quickly found to be spent on infection prevention policies and masks. (found later that they anyways did not protect)
So, what happened? Two things, and the first is (and this will certainty surprise you), hospital administrations thought, that they were supplying safe enough air!
Disconcerting as this answer might be, the fact is that hospital administrations did not know that the air purification technologies they had installed and thought to be effective in capturing and/or killing viruses, were in fact not effective at all. (and this because of the claims by "experts" and manufactures)
Unfortunately, also many governmental institutions such as the American FDA, the CDC and equivalent European institutions (and also many famous private institutions like the WHO), thought that 99.9% to 99.9999% decontamination was good enough. However, through the contagion and deaths that quickly followed, it become blatantly obvious that anything less than 100% decontamination, is a mortal danger.
The second reason is this (and maybe this is easier to understand, more straightforwardly), at that time, there was no new technology invented (or available) that could guarantee the 100% decontamination of treated air.
And on this aspect the logic is clear, why spend efforts (and money) to try to invent something new, when everyone, even the highest expert authorities thought that the current well-known technologies like HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filter systems, that were bought and installed in hospitals (even recently), were adequate enough protection?
As it is said, "Necessity is the mother of invention", n'est ce pa?
Ok, now permitting that you agree with aforementioned reasons (not meaning that you agree that they are valid), the question that now begs to be answered is this - what type of technology can guarantee, 100% pure, clean air production?
Does it even exit?
Now to answer same, we need to first identify the true problem, the "pregnant" problem, with an investigative technical type question: why did the current technologies fail so miserably to provide safe air to breathe?
To help us understand the issue, let's first examine the defining characteristic of the main "actor": the virus.
In simple terms, many don't understand (even "experts") the true scope of the air decontamination challenge when it involves viruses.
Viruses, are not just another microscopic biological entity like protozoa or bacteria.
The first characteristic that makes viruses unique, is their small size - their very small size. Viruses are extremely small, even thousands of times smaller than the aforementioned microbes - they are of nano dimension size! (a scale that is of a billionth of a meter)
What does being of nano-size mean? What is the significance?
As you can see from the chart above, nano-scale is an incredibly small dimension, smaller even than the wave length of visible light, meaning you can't see them even under the most advanced/expensive visible light microscopes, and it is this extreme small size that makes viruses tremendously dangerous, since they can easily go-through ("escape") from even the most advanced military-grade HEPA filter systems installed in the world's most top-secret bio-labs.
So, the question that now naturally arises is this, how can engineers design HEPA filters to capture 100% of these nanosized viruses?
The answer may surprise you: it is impossible!
Why? Because to guarantee the capture / filtering-out of the smallest viruses (like the AAV "Adeno-Associated Virus" that has a dimension of 20 nano-meters) (and there could be others still smaller, yet to be discovered) a filter manufacturer must guarantee that ALL of the filter's mesh is at least, less than 20 nano-meters in aperture.
领英推荐
Up until today, to the best of my knowledge (and my research) no technology exists that can guarantee such a nano-size specification, and so infection and deaths occurred unexpectedly, and quite frequently.
After more than 50 years of research and development (and multi-millions of dollars) manufacturers of HEPA filter technology can still only claim 99.9% to 99.9999% filter effectiveness in advertising, never 100% - and this claim. in the fine print, is only for particles that are ca. 300 nm in size or greater.
And now even if it is taboo, this now needs to be said. It is highly unethical (even criminal) to produce marketing spin that creates the impression that air decontamination equipment with 99.9% to 99.9999% effectiveness is safe enough filtering of air - people have died because of such misleading advertising.
What is the solution to achieve 100% air decontamination?
There's only one, sure way!
All the viruses in the air treatment stream must be killed or "inactivated" as virologists say, because anything less than 100%, means that hundreds of thousands of viruses are left alive in the post-treated air, that will be put back into the room to be breathed in - not a good idea.
So, what technology can guarantee to kill 100% of all viruses?
I'll give you a hint.
The solution already exists, it is over 100 years old and dentists still use it regularly with 100% safe results - but up until now, it was not possible to use the same solution for viruses in the air.
Yes, you guessed it, STERLIZATION! However, this time instead of sterilizing drills or scalpels, the technique can be used to sterilize air!
STERILIZATION, IS THE ONLY WAY TO GUARANTEE 100% SAFE AIR
Now, surprising to me, (I think you may also find this interesting) there have been some objections to this sterilization pathway to help make air safe to breathe.
Some people have quipped that sterilization could make the air unhealthy, and without saying much more, I note that these are the same people that think that 99.9999% decontaminated air is safe enough for them and their families to breathe.
Well, since it's a question let's try to answer it anyways - does sterilization make air unhealthy?
Now, I do not want to bring God into this conversation, so I will use “Mother Nature” instead.
"She", about a million years ago (give or take a hundred thousand years), decided that the best ingredients / composition of air to help create and sustain human beings man was a mixture of: (according to NASA's data)
and the rest containing trace amounts of Helium, Neon, Methane, Hydrogen, and Carbon Dioxide, all adding up to 100%.
This is the type of health inducing air, that is found at mountain tops.
Now, modern man who also likes to play around with nano-viruses in labs (where they also happily like to "leak out" from), was not part of Mother Nature's plan, and so it is best to sterilize them out of the air.
Of course, if someone, while they are in a healthcare institution, wants to breathe in 99.9999% decontaminated air and accepts the remaining 0.0001% risk, they are welcome to do so.
On my part, I would want to take myself and my family to this type of hospital.
Conclusion
Crossing the bridge to Safe Healthcare for our families.
For those that care about their families, and those government and institutional leaders that also care about the health of the public under their responsibility, there is now known to be a huge gap in the road to safety from airborne virus infections.
However, through the technique of air sterilization, it is now possible for a healthcare institutions to state a guarantee that in a particular area (or even the whole hospital) there is being used a technology that sterilises all the air passing through it.
The technology is called KiIlViD?, which stands for Kill Virus Device. I think aptly acronymized.
One company in the world makes this technology (and for mere full disclosure, I am proud to be its start-up advisor), that can bridge this enormous air safety virus gap through this new air sterilization technology.
KillViD? was also just recently tested in France's finest INSERM government biolabs labs.
KillViD?, that can produce 100% safe air to breathe was invented by the start-up team of Gamma Pulse SAS, operating out of Ecole Polytechnique Palaiseau ?(X-Labs Research), just outside Paris city limits.
The test results even surpassed the expectations of the INSERM lab's experienced biologists and directors, proving that now a new technology can do, what was thought to be impossible before - GUARANTEE the instant and complete kill (inactivation) of all the viruses in a treated air stream.
This incredible world's first result (the guarantee of 100% decontamination), which hospitals can also now use, was achieved by a highly motivated, and hard-working multicultural team of scientists, engineers, and technicians who love their families and their community.
They worked hard to invent KillViD because they did not want to accept even a 0.0001% chance, that their families (or others) needed to take a chance to get a death dealing HAI while in a hospital, by breathing in viruses that were not taken out by inadequate (and dangerous) air purification equipment.
Gamma Pulse would be happy to partner with qualified industrial manufacturing partners, to help bring to the world's benefit, this new and exciting life-saving technology.
Author: George Bonatsos