You may be interested to know that the PPE team at the Department for Health and Social care have announced that two transparent face masks have passed rigorous safety testing and are now available to be used as an equivalent to the ‘Type IIR’ masks required in healthcare settings.

Further detail is available at: National PPE Acute and Primary Customer Insight newsletter.

I have copied the relevant excerpt below:

As you are aware the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has been working on a coordinated range of initiatives to enable the creation and availability of safe and effective transparent face masks to health and social care since September 2020.

 We are pleased that there are now two products made by UK manufacturers which meet the technical specification set out by the Transparent Face Mask Steering Group. These are just a couple out of many products currently passing through technical assurance.

 Technical assurance has now successfully completed on the Alpha-Solway and Contechs transparent face masks, this confirms they are both compliant with the technical specification and can be bought and used in health and care settings, subject to local risk assessments.

 This is testament to the success of the UK Government’s UK Make strategy.

 We are about to start widely piloting transparent face masks across a variety of settings in the UK to further explore usability. This will provide further evidence on user acceptability and suitability on this new and innovative product type within relevant settings.

We will keep you informed on further developments.

Here is some more information about the two providers:

Contechs: https://www.contechsmedical.co.uk/product-page/transparent-fluid-resistant-surgical-face-mask

Alpha-Solway: https://www.alphasolway.com/alpha-solway-protects-nhs-scotland-frontline-workers-with-innovative-new-uk-made-transparent-face-mask