Meltblown Nonwovens and Protective Fabrics: Challenges and Opportunities during COVID-19 and Beyond

As the COVID-19 cases started increasing in the early months of 2020 in the US and around the world, the major news was about the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), especially that of N95 masks. N95 masks are understood to have the ability to provide maximum possible protection against pathogens to the wearer since they filter out at least 95% of the hardest to filter particles that are about 300 nanometres size particles in the aerosols. Since the major
mode of transmission was through the virus being present in aerosols, it made perfect sense. Although Coronavirus, like most of the viruses, is in the range of 60 nm-150 nm in size, the droplets that carry these viruses are in the range of 5 microns-10 microns in size, and good quality N95 masks can effectively capture most of the virus and thus provide a high level of desired protection.