I dug into Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" and found this excerpt regarding how workers at the Army's Ft. Detrick facility "suit up" before having contact with Ebola:
Begin excerpt:
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NANCY SPENT the morning doing paperwork in her office. After lunch, she removed her diamond engagement ring and her wedding band and locked them in her desk drawer. She dropped by Tony Johnson's office and asked him if he was ready to go in. They went downstairs and along a corridor to the Ebola suite. There was only one locker room leading into it. Tony Johnson insisted that Nancy Jaax go in first, to get changed. He would follow.
The room was small and contained a few lockers along one wall, some shelves, and a mirror over a sink. She undressed, removing all of her clothing, including her underwear, and put everything in her locker.
She left the Band-Aid stuck to her hand. From a shelf, she took up a sterile surgical scrub suit-green pants and a green shirt, the clothing that a surgeon wears in an operating room-and she dragged on the pants and tied the drawstring at the waist, and snapped the shirt's snaps. You were not allowed to wear anything under the scrub suit, no underwear. She pulled a cloth surgical cap over her head and tucked her hair up into the cap while looking in the mirror. She did not appear nervous, but she was starting to feel a little bit nervous. This was only her second trip into a hot area.
Standing in her bare feet, she turned away from the mirror and faced a door leading into Level 2. A deep blue light streamed through a window in the door-ultraviolet light. Viruses fall apart under ultraviolet light, which smashes their genetic material and makes them unable to replicate.
As she opened the door and entered Level 2, she felt the door stick against her pull, sucked in by a difference of air pressure, and a gentle drag of air whispered around her shoulders and traveled inward, toward the hot zone. This was negative air pressure, designed to keep hot agents from drifting outward. The door closed behind her, and she was in Level 2. The blue light bathed her face. She walked through a water-shower stall that contained an ultraviolet light, a bar of soap, and some ordinary shampoo. The shower stall led into a bathroom, where there was a shelf that held some clean white socks. She put on a pair of socks and pushed through another door, into Level 3.
This was a room known as the staging area. It contained a desk with a telephone and a sink. A cylindrical waxed cardboard box sat on the floor beside the desk. It was a biohazard container known as a "hatbox," or "ice-cream container." A hatbox is blazed with bio-hazard symbols, which are red, spiky three-petaled flowers, and it is used for storing and transporting infectious waste. This hatbox was empty. It was only a makeshift chair.
She found a box of latex rubber surgical gloves and a plastic shaker full of baby powder. She shook baby powder onto her hands and pulled on the gloves. Then she found a roll of sticky tape, and she tore off several strips of tape and hung them in a row on the edge of the desk.
Then she taped herself. Taking up one strip at a time, she taped the cuffs of her gloves to the sleeves of her scrub shirt, running the tape around the cuff to make a seal. She then tapped her socks to her trousers. Now she wore one layer of protection between herself and the replicative Other.
Lieutenant Colonel Johnson came in through Level 2 wearing a surgical scrub suit. He put on rubber gloves and began taping them to his sleeves, and he taped his socks to his pants.
Nancy turned to the right, into an antechamber, and found her space suit hanging on a rack. It was Chemturion biological space suit, and it was marked in letters across the chest: JAAX. A Chemturion is also known as a blue suit that meets government specifications for work with airborne hot agents.
She opened up the space suit and laid it down on the concrete floor and stepped into it, feet first. She pulled it up to her armpits and slid her arms into the sleeves until her fingers entered the gloves.
The suit had brown rubber gloves that were attached by gaskets at the cuffs. These were the space suit's main gloves, and they were made of heavy rubber. They were the most important barrier between her and Ebola.
The hands were the weak point, the most vulnerable part of the suit, because of what they handled. They handled needles, knives, and sharp pieces of bone. You are responsible for maintaining you space unit in the same way that a paratrooper is responsible for packing and maintaining his own parachute. Perhaps Nancy was in a bit of a hurry and did not inspect her space suit as closely as she should have.
Lieutenant Colonel Johnson gave her a short briefing on procedures and then helped her lower the helmet over her head. The helmet was made of soft, flexible plastic. Johnson looked at her face, visible through the clear faceplate, to see how she was doing.
She closed an oiled Ziploc zipper across the suit's chest. The zipper made a popping sound as it snapped shut, pop, pop, pop. The moment the space suit was closed, her faceplate fogged up. She reached over to a wall and pulled down a coiled yellow air hose and plugged it into her suit. Then came a roar of flowing air, and her suit bloated up, fat and hard, and a whiff of dry air clear away some tiny beads of sweat that had collected inside her faceplate.
Around the Institute, they say that you can't predict who will panic inside a biological space unit. It happens now and then, mainly to inexperienced people. The moment the helmet does over their faces, their eyes begin to glitter with fear, they sweat, turn purple, claw at the suit, try to tear it open to get some fresh air, lose their balance and fall down on the floor, and they can start screaming or moaning inside the suit, which makes them sound as if they are suffocating in a closet.
After he had helped Nancy Jaax put on her space suit, and had looked into her eyes for signs of panic, Tony Johnson put on his own suit, and when he was closed up and ready, he handed her a pack of dissection tools. He seemed calm and collected. They turned and faced the stainless-steel door together. The door lead into an air lock and Level 4. The door was plastered with biohazard symbol and warning:
CAUTION
BIOHAZARD
DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT WEARING VENTILATED SUIT
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End of excerpt
Compare the above procedure vis-a-vis what health workers in hospitals have been wearing.
I've read that healthcare workers are now using respirators instead of just filters (for breathing ambient air). That's a step in the right direction.
But Ebola is so transmissible, that even more protection might be required...
