Gut Pathog
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Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is required to safely work with biological agents of bacterial (i.e. Mycobacterium tuberculosis) or viral origin (Ebola and SARS). COVID-19 pandemic especially has created unforeseen public health challenges including a global shortage of PPE needed for the safety of health care workers (HCWs). Although sufficient stocks of PPE are currently available, their critical shortage may develop soon due to increase in demand and depletion of existing supply lines. To empower our HCWs and ensure their continued protection, proactive measures are urgently required to develop procedures to safely decontaminate the PPEs to allow their "selective reuse" during contingency situations. ⋯ Our study, therefore, successfully establishes the utility of VHP to effectively disinfect PPE for a possible reuse as per the requirements. VHP treatment did not damage coveralls, cause physical deformity and also did not alter fabric architecture of melt blown layer. We observed that disinfection process was successful consistently and therefore believe that the VHP-based decontamination model will have a universal applicability and utility. This process can be easily and economically scaled up and can be instrumental in easing global PPE shortages in any biosafety facility or in health care settings during pandemic situation such as COVID-19.