A little anti-covid nasal spray when you get out of the metro?

This could become our next barrier gesture.

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Pixabay / ThorstenF

  • While the variants, which make the coronavirus more contagious, circulate in France, new anti-Covid products are emerging.

  • Nasal spray and mouthwash capable of reducing viral load, or masks impregnated with virucides are appearing on the market.

  • Their vocation: to complete the range of daily barrier actions against the coronavirus.

Hydroalcoholic gel, mask, disinfectant wipes.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have known the objects essential to good compliance with barrier gestures, and we have them all.

But in this area too, technology is evolving, and many French and foreign companies are trying to develop the offer of products supposed to help us keep the coronavirus at a safe distance.

Nasal spray and anti-Covid mouthwash, or even masks with virucidal properties have thus emerged, and could well integrate our routine of barrier gestures.

To reduce the viral load, a nasal spray ...

When you get out of a busy bus or metro, or even a store, pulling out your bottle of hydroalcoholic gel has become a reflex.

And since Covid-19 is mainly transmitted by droplets of saliva or nasal discharge when an infected person coughs or sneezes, some have had the idea of ​​developing products that act at the source, to “deactivate” these droplets.

This is what the nasal spray developed by the French group Pharma & Beauty (P & B) promises to do.

A class 1 medical device which should soon obtain its CE marking for sale in pharmacies in Europe in February.

This ionized water-based product, with antimicrobial properties, "reduces the viral load by 99%" by dislodging and deactivating infectious agents located in the nasal cavity, assures Laurent Dodet, founding president of the P & B group. And aims to "complete the barrier gestures", having a preventive effect "after taking a risk for example, when leaving transport or a lunch", details Laurent Dodet.

But also "by reducing the viral load" of infected people.

An interesting process "if you do an inhalation just after being infected", before the virus enters the respiratory tract, believes Dr. Pierre-Jacques Raybaud, general practitioner graduated in immunology.

... or a mouthwash

And why not a device with similar effects for anti-Covid oral hygiene?

A mouthwash - also capable of reducing the viral load - has been developed, this time by the giant Unilever.

The Dutch-British group commissioned an independent

in vitro study

on the virucidal efficacy of its cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) product, known for its antiviral and antibacterial properties.

"Preliminary results from these trials show that proper use of a mouthwash containing CPC technology could play an important role as an additional preventive hygiene measure to reduce viral transmission of Covid-19," Unilever says .

While specifying that his product "reduces by 99.9% the viral load of SARS-CoV-2, after 30 seconds of rinsing".

Thus, "even if it is obvious that this is neither a curative treatment, nor a fully proven means of preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the results obtained are very promising," Glyn Roberts, head of R&D in oral care for the group, since the viral load could be reduced in the mouth over a period of up to 6 hours ”.

Virucidal masks

And innovation also concerns masks.

Faced with the arrival of variants that make the coronavirus much more contagious, the doctrine for containing the epidemic has just evolved: from now on, homemade fabric masks are not recommended by the government.

Their artisanal manufacture, apart from sanitary standards, makes them today insufficiently reliable.

On the other hand, several French companies have created models enriched in virucide (anti-virus), for enhanced anti-Covid effectiveness.

This is the case of the Serge Ferrari brand, in Isère, which has designed an anti-Covid fabric based on silver particles.

Or the Montpellier company Pharma Nature, which sells masks containing copper.

A track also explored by the company ProNeem, in Marseille, which has designed an “intelligent” mask.

Impregnated with a virucide based on silver chloride, it eliminates 99.9% of the virus in a few minutes by destroying its membrane, according to the expertise carried out by an independent laboratory on Covid-19.

The device is based on a micro-encapsulation of the active ingredients, which allows the product to permanently penetrate the textile fibers.

Called "Viral Stop", this category 1 mask has passed all the safety and efficacy tests imposed by French regulations and will be sold from the end of January in tobacco shops.

The manager of ProNeem and doctor in molecular biology, Nathalie Hagège, boasts a product "economical and ecological, since it is enough to wash it once a week, when it is dirty".

A practical product and "interesting because, when you touch it, you avoid the contamination by handling that you can have with a conventional mask", judges Dr. Raybaud.

For the general practitioner, the “virucidal” certification obtained by ProNeem proves that his mask “destroys the virus, like a copper mask”.

However, "the leak rate of this mask [the exhaled air which leaves the mask without being filtered] will always remain greater than that of an FFP2 or FFP3 mask," he warns.

So many anti-Covid devices that could quickly find their audience as the circulation of new variants poses the threat of an epidemic outbreak and a third confinement.

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