An engineering researcher from the University of Alberta in Canada has discovered a way to treat surgical masks that enables them to actually kill viruses. His findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
"Surgical masks were originally designed to protect the wearer from infectious droplets in clinical settings, but it doesn't help much to prevent the spread of respiratory diseases such as SARS or [Middle East respiratory syndrome] or influenza," said Hyo-Jick Choi, PhD, a professor at University of Alberta.
Previously, Dr. Choi and his team were working on making oral vaccines, but kept running into a problem — when the liquid solution dried, it formed crystals that killed the virus they wanted to use in the vaccine, making it useless.
The team used that discovery to form a salt solution and applied it to the masks, hoping crystals would form that would kill viruses. They were successful.
When a droplet with influenza virus contacts the mask, it absorbs the salt from the filter. As the droplet evaporates, the virus "suffers fatal physical damage" as the salt crystallizes.
Dr. Choi now has a provisional patent for the salt-crystallization mechanism that deactivates the virus.