Evolution of personal protective equipment from its inception to COVID-19

ABSTRACT

A bizarre illness, identified in a group of patients with respiratory problems in Wuhan, China;was then ascertained as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) – that proliferated into a global pandemic, with lakhs of people getting infected per day. Given this pandemic situation, there is a need globally for the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect oneself from getting infected by the disease. This is very much critical in the healthcare sector as healthcare units like hospitals and clinics might act as potential epicentres for the spread of a disease and cause the healthcare workers to act as vehicles for disease transmission. Given this context, this review article primely focuses on the different ways to prevent transmission of virus and the different PPE that exist in the market. The various anti-viral technologies which are currently available in the market to tackle SARS-CoV-2 have been described along with few interesting literature which can be looked upon to develop anti-viral PPE that can be effective against enveloped viruses like the current SARS-CoV-2. © 2021