Experimental Comparison of CWA 17553:2020 Community Face Coverings to Surgical Masks and Filtering Facepiece Respirators

With the worldwide spread of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020, shortages of surgical masks and filtering facepiece respirator (FFR) masks became a critical problem. European governments recommended that civilians should not use these masks so that the shortages in the hospitals would be minimised. In Europe, civilians were instead advised to wear community face coverings. In June 2020, the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) published CWA 17553:2020 [1‐3] which formalised minimum requirements, methods of testing and use of community face coverings. The CWA 17553 is presently only a recommendation, and not an official standard such as the EN14683 standard for surgical masks or the EN149 standard for filtering facepiece respirators. Because there are different performance requirements for these three different classes of masks, it makes comparing their performance challenging. In this work, we perform particulate filtration efficiency measurement, total inward leakage measurement and breathability measurement on a range of surgical masks, filtering facepiece respirators and community face coverings. This analysis provides a useful comparison between material performance and the effectiveness of a mask’s design which is manufactured from this material.