Kevin Ward, a University of Michigan emergency medicine physician, tests a negative pressure helmet he helped design. By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.COVID-19 is a threat to the very people fighting it—nurses, doctors, and other first responders, who are exposed to virus-carrying droplets, or aerosols, from infected patients.
Now, a team has developed two devices that could reduce their risks by sucking away infectious aerosols: a helmet to be worn by a patient, and a small tent in which a patient could be enclosed.
The devices haven’t been proven to work in clinical settings, but their inventors hope they’ll reduce the toll among health care workers, at least 90,000 of whom worldwide