Bug Zapper Kills COVID-19 Virus

St. Luke’s, Lehigh University collaboration leads to clever, life-saving invention. BETHLEHEM, PA. - Among stories of hope, generosity and togetherness, the COVID-19 pandemic has also given rise to an incredible feat of ingenuity - the invention of the "Bug Zapper" to sterilize masks. As hospitals and different front-line organizations jumped to safe massive portions of life-saving supplies and personal protective tools (PPE), there has also been the need to establish faster, extra efficient ways to wash and sterilize those gadgets, particularly the coveted N95 masks. St. Luke’s University Health Network anesthesiologist, Christopher Roscher, MD, anticipated the need and an idea started to type. "It turned clear that PPE provides would grow to be limited because the virus progressed," he says. The St. Luke’s Sterile Processing Department, or SPD, is the place where all surgical and wiki.giroudmathias.ch medical devices are despatched to be meticulously cleaned, ZappifyBug.com sanitized and packaged for reuse. It’s a behind-the-scenes perform that is an essential part of the health care system. "On any given day, we are processing many, many items right here at our hospital in Bethlehem," states Taylor Bennett, St. Luke’s Network Director of Sterile Processing.

"But with the current state of affairs, there may be an overwhelming have to course of our employees’ PPE on a daily basis. For Dr. Roscher, a light went on - actually and figuratively. "I had been doing private research about discovering methods to decontaminate masks for reuse, and peer-reviewed literature recommended that, in a pandemic, stir.tomography.stfc.ac.uk UV-C mild may very well be an appropriate strategy to sterilize masks," he says. UV-C is a selected vary of UV, or ultra-violet, light and has been proven to deactivate viruses and different pathogens by inflicting modifications in their DNA. Through a mutual contact, Dr. Roscher acquired in contact with Nelson Tansu, PhD, Lehigh University’s Director and Endowed Chair of its Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics (CPN). "What St. Luke’s was searching for was a excessive-throughput sterilization system," stated Dr. Tansu. The 2 organizations joined forces by a sequence of Zoom conferences and a whole bunch of emails, to design, fabricate, set up and take a look at the device - all within a matter of two weeks - and all whereas maintaining social distancing protocols.

The end end result: a technique to successfully and effectively sterilize 200 masks every eight minutes! The "Bug fly zapper" in action. "Our existing units were not designed for big-scale use. They might solely sterilize about 30 masks at a time," stated Eric Tesoriero, DO, anesthesiologist for St. Luke’s and a collaborator on the mission. The unit, engineered by Lehigh college students and employees and assembled at St. Luke’s by biomedical engineer Jay Johnson, has been affectionally named the "Bug mosquito zapper" not solely because of its appearance, but as a consequence of its COVID-killing properties. "It is incredible that this project moved at such a speedy speed," remarks Dr. Tansu. The team ranged from PhDs to MDs and even included an unexpected contributor - Axel Tansu, Dr. Tansu’s adolescent son. In actual fact, it was Axel’s contribution that allowed the unit to have such a high-throughput fee. "Our original design was cylindrical in form, to ensure even publicity of the sunshine on all surfaces," explains Dr. Tansu.

"Axel got here to me and stated, ‘Dad, what about an octagon? ’ And sure enough, he was proper. A patent to protect the team’s intellectual design has been filed. And a celebration for the collaborators to satisfy, in-person, goodttsure.com will probably be planned as soon as it is safe to do so. Until then, the rechargeable bug zapper Zapper will likely be hard at work, serving to to guard the frontline workers at St. Luke’s and beyond. This, like so many other stories, provides a ray of hope through the pandemic - showcasing that the human thoughts and mosquito zapper spirit can overcome something - particularly when working collectively for an excellent cause. Afterall, because the famous philosopher Plato understood thousands of years ago, electric bug zapper necessity is the mom of invention. Founded in 1872, mediawiki.laisvlaanderen.ehb.be St. Luke's University Health Network (SLUHN) is a completely integrated, regional, non-revenue community of greater than 15,000 staff offering services at 11 hospitals and 300 outpatient sites. With annual net revenue greater than $2 billion, the Network’s service space contains 11 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, wiki.anythingcanbehacked.com Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey.