Recent work by Professor Diego Mantovani’s team shows that adding a bioactive coating to surgical masks makes it possible to destroy, in less than a minute, 99.99% of the viruses found on their surface.
According to Professor Mantovani, these masks would be particularly useful to people who find themselves in places where the risk of contamination is high. “I am thinking, among others, of people who have to wait several hours in a hospital emergency room. In addition, if COVID-19 makes a comeback, these masks could also be distributed at the entrance to busy places such as supermarkets. Their price would be affordable. According to our calculations, it would cost around 10 cents more per mask, if their production was done on a large scale.