The Performance Test of Domestically-Built Powered Air Purifying Respirator with Hood (PAPR), During The Pandemic of COVID-19 in Thailand

Abstract

During the epidemic of COVID-19 in Thailand at the beginning of 2020, personal protective equipment (PPE) was crucial for medical staff, especially, power air purifying respirators (PAPR). PAPR is an effective PPE for medical staff used to protect themselves when dealing with COVID-19 patients. In the situation of lacking PPE for the medical staff in Thailand at that time, many domestic developers built PAPRs for urgent use to support the medical staff. Therefore, to ensure safety and gain confidence in the domestically built PAPR, there was an attempt to develop the specifications and standards to ensure the safety of the products and set up the testing facilities. The risk assessment was undertaken by interviewing some invited medical staff in a focus group and resulted in setting up facilities for testing three important parameters, namely, total inward leakage, air supply, and breathing resistance.

This study aimed to evaluate the performance of the domestically built PAPR in terms of the three parameters above and to compare it with the commercially imported PAPRs. The results exhibited that the performance of the domestically built PAPR was equivalent to the commercially imported ones. Thus, it was promised that the domestically built PAPR could be used in the event of a pandemic.