Made-in-Israel anti-pathogen mask ‘registered for marketing’

Sonovia’s Sonomask has been recognized by the US Food and Drug Administration as “Registered for Marketing,” the company told The Jerusalem Post.

An Israeli start-up, Sonovia developed an almost-permanent, ultrasonic, fabric-finishing technology for mechanical impregnation of zinc oxide nanoparticles into textiles. The company sped up efforts to manufacture masks using its anti-pathogen fabric at the start of the coronavirus crisis in Israel. Now, three months later, it has undergone extensive tests that showed positive results, including its latest filtration results – inhalation and exhalation – which showed a 98% success rate for stopping aerosols that are less than five microns in diameter, the size of the droplets that World Health Organization officials think are transmitting the contagion. Typical respiratory droplets exceed this size.

Other tests showed that it has a 99.8877% viricidal effect, meaning the fabric works to deactivate viruses so that they cannot enter host cells, after an exposure time of 24 hours.

It was these results that helped enable the company to receive its FDA status.

The company launched commercial sales earlier this month.

“Testing COVID-19 specifically is currently not possible, as only government research institutes are permitted to obtain the virus, and if so, they are restricted to testing human specimens’ diagnostics,” explained Dr. Jason Migdal, a research scientist with Sonovia, in a WhatsApp interview. “However, the virus examined [against Sonovia’s fabric] is structurally comparable and therefore acts as a substitute.”

He said that, “now armed with FDA approval, it’s our objective to completely replace the wasteful and non-viricidal disposables and proceed to compare efficiency overall against largely impractical medical respirator” masks.

THE SONOMASK, designed by Israeli start-up Sonovia to protect against coronavirus, is made of a fabric that deactivates viruses so that they cannot enter host cells.