President Donald Trump Monday applauded the Food and Drug Administration's move to approve an Ohio company's system that allows the N95 masks used by doctors and other healthcare providers in the frontlines against coronavirus to be sterilized and reused.
"I've wondered, these very expensive masks, they just throw them away, and I said, why wouldn't they be sterilized," Trump said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"Well, they have the equipment to make it so you can sterilize them up to 20 times, so think of the savings."
Sunday, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said the administration has authorized the Battelle decontamination system, which can clean up to 80,000 masks per system every day.
“We issued a new authorization this evening to @Battelle for their decontamination system."
Hahn said on Twitter. "@US_FDA staff have been working nonstop across gov and with the private sector to deliver solutions to the American public."
Through the Battelle decontamination system, now operating in West Jefferson, Ohio, it takes about two-and-a-half hours to decontaminate the masks, reports The Hill. Healthcare providers using the system will collect their respirator masks every day and send them to Battell, where the equipment is labeled with a barcode serial number so hospitals get back their own masks. The masks are also marked with the number of times they have been processed.
Meanwhile, coronavirus tests are out that allows doctors to see in minutes if a patient is showing positive for the disease, said Trump.
"In minutes you see whether or not you have the problem and that's something that nobody thought could happen," said Trump of the Abbott Laboratories test. "They came up with something that nobody was even thinking about two weeks ago or five weeks ago, so that's going to make a big impact."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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