Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Francesca Dy. Laura Carlson is out.
Speaker 1: It's day one h since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Our main story, masks and other personal protective equipment are
Speaker 1: the only things standing between frontline healthcare workers and infection.
Speaker 1: But fake or badly made masks are circulating through the
Speaker 1: market and they can be very hard to spot. But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened in virus news today. President Donald Trump
Speaker 1: will hold a massive indoor campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Cases in Oklahoma have skyrocketed since the beginning of June.
Speaker 1: The White House has dismissed suggestions that the rally will
Speaker 1: lead to a dangerous rise in actions, but epidemiologists and
Speaker 1: other experts agree the rally is likely to cause a
Speaker 1: so called superspreadery event. The b Ok Center where the
Speaker 1: rally will take place, seats nineteen thousand people and President
Speaker 1: Trump intends to pack it. Attendees will need to sign
Speaker 1: waivers absolving the Trump campaign of liability, and temperature checks
Speaker 1: will be done at the door. Masks will be provided,
Speaker 1: but not required. Experts say these measures can ensure no
Speaker 1: infected people will get into the venue, and that temperature
Speaker 1: checks are virtually meaningless. The differences between the Trump rally
Speaker 1: and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests from a public
Speaker 1: health perspective is the entirely enclosed nature of the arena
Speaker 1: and the likelihood that an older, more vulnerable group will
Speaker 1: be at the b Okay Center. The protests have not
Speaker 1: yet been linked to a spike in cases. The United
Speaker 1: Kingdom lowered its COVID nineteen alert level by one rank
Speaker 1: to love three. That reflects the fact that the coronavirus
Speaker 1: is no longer spreading exponentially in the community after almost
Speaker 1: three months of lockdown. The new level allows for more
Speaker 1: relaxation of social distancing measures. Some non essential shops had
Speaker 1: already reopened this week, and finally there's now a sign
Speaker 1: that the coronavirus reached Italy, the first European epicenter of
Speaker 1: the crisis, two months before scientists first believed sewage samples
Speaker 1: taken from the cities of Milan and Turin in December
Speaker 1: showed traces of stars cove two, according to a new study.
Speaker 1: The report is part of a regular round of testing
Speaker 1: on environmental virology carried out by government agency since two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, and now for today's main story. If there's
Speaker 1: one simple technology that has come to the forefront during
Speaker 1: the coronavirus pandemic, it's the face mask. Special masks called
Speaker 1: respirators are designed to prevent doctors and nurses from catching
Speaker 1: the virus when they treat infected people. But not all
Speaker 1: respirators do what they're labeled to. Fakes and shoddy products abound,
Speaker 1: and you can't always tell how many particles of mask
Speaker 1: can filter just by looking at Bloomberg reporter Naomi Kraski
Speaker 1: reported on how you catch a fake mask and the
Speaker 1: lengths one German company is going to to fight the problem.
Speaker 1: This is the sound of a lab at testing company
Speaker 1: to if Nord from a video where workers are inspecting
Speaker 1: the filters on face masks. In Germany, when people talk
Speaker 1: about testing and the tooth, it's usually in the context
Speaker 1: of cars. If you want to drive and twenty miles
Speaker 1: an hour on the Autobahn or even twenty miles an
Speaker 1: hour down your own street, you have to get everything
Speaker 1: from breaks and lights to bright yellow hazard gear and
Speaker 1: body rust checked out at your local toof testing center
Speaker 1: every two years. But Germany's Industrial Quality Control companies inspect
Speaker 1: a lot more than just vehicles. When the government started
Speaker 1: shipping in face masks by the hundreds of millions from
Speaker 1: China as coronavirus infections spiked around the country, it turned
Speaker 1: to tuf Nord to help make sure the masks are
Speaker 1: fit to use. It's far more than a rubber stamp.
Speaker 1: Almost one quarter of the masks failed the test, and
Speaker 1: executive at the company told me we are currently walking
Speaker 1: in three shifts UM twenty four hours per day, seven
Speaker 1: days a week, in order to cope with a tremendous
Speaker 1: number of mass tests. That's Dirk stend Camp, CEO of
Speaker 1: tiff Nord. Though they're known for cars testing workplace safety,
Speaker 1: here is actually how they got their start. UM. The
Speaker 1: foundation year was actually eighteen hundred sixty nine UM as
Speaker 1: a North German association for the monitoring of steam boilers
Speaker 1: actually UM. At that time we were based in Hamburg
Speaker 1: UM and we were actually inaugurated to protect human beings
Speaker 1: against the hazards of new technologies. There used to be
Speaker 1: close to one hundred independent testing companies in Germany. Mergers
Speaker 1: and acquisitions brought that number down to fewer than ten,
Speaker 1: and each of them does business everywhere, not just in Germany.
Speaker 1: Tif nord stend Camps company tests everything from data security
Speaker 1: for smartphone apps to nuclear power plant safety. Before the
Speaker 1: coronavirus was one of only a few institutions accredited to
Speaker 1: test face masks at all. A few doctors needed the
Speaker 1: most protective type of masks, respirators designed to filter out
Speaker 1: airborne particles. With the virus that changed, doctors need to
Speaker 1: be protected from tiny particles called aerosols. The Corona virus
Speaker 1: is able to be transported through such small aerosol particles
Speaker 1: of a size you are not able to see with
Speaker 1: the human eye, even under a microscope, and these FFP
Speaker 1: masks are now designed to actually filter these aerosols. The
Speaker 1: process of screening the masks to make sure they can
Speaker 1: do this job starts before a shipment ever leaves China.
Speaker 1: The masks have to pass a literal smell test. TIFF's
Speaker 1: local inspectors check for a chemical odor and test the
Speaker 1: ability of the straps. They check the paperwork. A second
Speaker 1: team is waiting when the plane touches down in Germany.
Speaker 1: They do another visual inspection and check the freight papers,
Speaker 1: and then our inspectors mark shipments either green that means
Speaker 1: has past test or rett that means has not passed,
Speaker 1: and only the green ones are then finally checked in
Speaker 1: our laboratories. That means we take samples out of the
Speaker 1: green marked or labeled masks bitches, and these southern specifically tested.
Speaker 1: That's where things get really detailed. Let's go to Essen,
Speaker 1: a city in the middle of Germany's rust belt, the
Speaker 1: industrial rural area. Chief's testing labs there used to work
Speaker 1: on face masks for coal miners. When the mining business declined,
Speaker 1: they tested particle filters and everything from vacuum cleaners to
Speaker 1: air conditioning. Their experts on dust. They even produce and
Speaker 1: sell their own test dust. But for the past couple
Speaker 1: of months their biggest business has been the virus. Here's
Speaker 1: Dirk Wrention, who runs the lab year. The masks that
Speaker 1: are made are made in China, and in China there
Speaker 1: are some very good producers that ensure very reliable and
Speaker 1: good mass deliveries, but precisely in the context of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic, they are also various producers that are naturally
Speaker 1: trying to do a good business and unfortunately are also
Speaker 1: to some extent really dishonest. That means that At first
Speaker 1: they ship good masks that also show good results and tests,
Speaker 1: and then in following shipments deliver masks that at first
Speaker 1: glands seem to be the same quality, but then show
Speaker 1: themselves and flitter tests to be significantly worse. Wrenchens teams
Speaker 1: pull samples from each batch of masks and test them
Speaker 1: in a process that takes two or three days. This
Speaker 1: is a special quick test, by the way, the full
Speaker 1: European testing protocol for face masks takes a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: The first step is simply to put the mask on.
Speaker 1: It's called a dawning test, and a three person panel
Speaker 1: of testers with different head sizes, two men and a
Speaker 1: woman tries each sample mask. They want to make sure
Speaker 1: it's air tight but reasonably comfortable. Then it's on to
Speaker 1: the less subjective measures. They strap the mask onto a
Speaker 1: special machine that looks like a model of a human
Speaker 1: head in order to measure how much air flow can
Speaker 1: pass through the filter each minute. The idea is to
Speaker 1: ensure that if you're wearing the mask for hours, you
Speaker 1: won't feel like you're suffocating. Finally, comes the filter test.
Speaker 1: They use a special chamber filled with a high concentration
Speaker 1: of a test gas and the mask gets attached to
Speaker 1: the end of a hose. Air from one side of
Speaker 1: the masque from the outside of the mask is suctioned
Speaker 1: through and measured to see how many particles arrive on
Speaker 1: the other side. In order to meet the European f
Speaker 1: FP two standard masks are supposed to filter out of aerosols.
Speaker 1: That's about the same level of protection as a US
Speaker 1: AND mask or a Chinese kN mask. But this is
Speaker 1: where appearances can be deceiving. You can identis inus fildo
Speaker 1: matrial alarm. You can have a really identical looking filter
Speaker 1: material that lets through forty of the aerosols without being
Speaker 1: able to tell the difference from another better mask by
Speaker 1: touch or feel. The German Ministry of Health said that
Speaker 1: about of the masks it's had delivered so far have
Speaker 1: failed these tests. Looking across the board at all the
Speaker 1: masks too has tested Wrench and put the figure slightly higher.
Speaker 1: Just under a quarter of all masks that reached his
Speaker 1: labs weren't up to grade. The quality was even worse
Speaker 1: for simple medical masks, which filter fewer particles than it
Speaker 1: was for the more high tech respirators. He said, that's
Speaker 1: why tests like this absolutely necessary because simply due to
Speaker 1: the enormous quantities of masks that are currently being shipped
Speaker 1: to Germany, the risk is very very high that otherwise
Speaker 1: low quality products would be delivered. Germany is by far
Speaker 1: not the only country to face this problem. In the US,
Speaker 1: US the Food and Drug Administration banded more than sixty
Speaker 1: mask producers after they failed similar tests at the CDC's
Speaker 1: National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory. So far, too teams have
Speaker 1: helped screen more than eight hundred million masks. They're nowhere
Speaker 1: near finished. As of the beginning of June, the German
Speaker 1: government was still waiting on delivery of another one point
Speaker 1: five billion masks through this fall. That was Naomi Krasgy
Speaker 1: in Berlin. And that's our show today. For coverage of
Speaker 1: the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review and a rating on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more
Speaker 1: listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is
Speaker 1: produced by topor Foreheas, Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson, and Laura Carlson.
Speaker 1: Today's main story was reported by Naomi Creski. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo sidran Our. Editors are Rick Shine and Me
Speaker 1: Francesca Levy. Bloomberg's head of podcasts is also Me.