A systematic review of the importance of using personal protective equipment (PPE) during the Coronavirus pandemic in the workplace

Background: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) was identified on 31 December 2019 inChina. The spreading rate of this disease has been so fast. The symptoms of Covid-19 are fever,cough, runny nose, and respiratory problems. This virus could be transmitted by exposing todroplets, having close contact, and touching contaminated surfaces. Since most workplaceshave been recently opened, this is essential to protect workers' health to control the spread ofCoronavirus in the world. The aim of this review study was to discern how much using PPEcould be effective in controlling of expansion of Coronavirus.Material and methods: In this systematic review according to keywords such as PPE,workplace, Covid19, worker, prevention and control; Published papers about ways in whichwe can control the spreading of Coronavirus in the workplace were gathered from PubMed,Scopus, Google scholar, also organizational websites such as WHO and CDC, since this virusbecame pandemic until now. All data were reviewed, arranged, and categorized based oninclusion and exclusion criteria; in the end, we used 11 papers of 27 papers in this review study.Results: The type of personal protective equipment that should be used is varied from oneworkplace to another. For instance, health care workers who have direct contact with patientsmust use goggles or face shields, gloves, gowns, respirators (N95 or FFP2 standard, orequivalent). We could use the hierarchy of hazard control in this situation.Conclusion: In conclusion, personal protective equipment could be useful, but they should beused with other hazard control methods, such as administrative controls or engineeringcontrols.

Keywords:

Coronavirus , Workplace , PPE , prevention , control , worker