All articles

How the COVID 19 pandemic changed the life of one of our scientists

In the following text, you will learn how Dr. Vladimír Ždímal’s life has changed during the pandemic of Covid-19. Dr. Vladimír Ždímal is the head of the Department of Aerosol Chemistry and Physics at our Institute.

Fig. 1: Samples of the tested respirators.

“Until 13^th March 2020, I lived the boring life of a researcher. Then suddenly everything changed. In the afternoon on that day, our director called me to return to the Institute from the ophthalmologist and asked me to perform some measurements of the filtration efficiency of new nanomaterials for my colleagues from the Technical University of Liberec. I complied and sent the measurement results to my colleagues in the evening of the same day.

From the subsequent e-mail communication, I understood that I had to explain the results better to them because there was confusion in their interpretation. After the explanation, the Rector of CTU, Mr. Petráček, invited me to join the COVID Czechia team on the following Monday. And then it all went at once. During the following week we made a short YouTube video about the need to wear face masks. Within about 3 days, almost all Czechs were wearing face masks. The next week, we made a YouTube video called #MASKS4ALL in English. In about a week it had over 5 million views. Right after that, I got a call from an editor of CNN International that asked me to be interviewed.

The next day I talked about the face masks, with US President Donald Trump before me and Dr Ryan, the head of the fight against COVID at WHO, who followed after me. A day later, I received a call from Professor Howard at the University of California asking if I would be willing to participate in a forthcoming review article on why we need to wear face masks to stop the spread of the pandemic. The manuscript was prepared and sent to the editors 10 days later. Today, a year and a half later, it represents the most downloaded and most viewed text on “Preprints.org”. This was followed by interviews for SkyNews Arabia, and for the first channel of Irish TV. I was invited also to the Czech Ministry of Health to give a presentation to Professor Prymula’s crisis staff, and to a public hearing of the Public Health Subcommittee of the Czech Parliament.

When we counted up the media appearances for our department about a year later, there were several hundred of them, including a number of live appearances on various TV stations and on a number of radio stations. Of course, most of the output was in text-based media, mostly on-line. At the end of the year, the Rector of the CTU, Associated Proffesor Petráček, awarded me a commemorative medal for extraordinary efforts in the fight against the transmission of COVID-19. In the autumn of this year, I received a medal from the President of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Professor Zažímalová, for popularization of science.”

Fig. 2: The filter section of the tested respirator is closed in a circular holder.

Fig. 3: The cut-out part of the filter in the circular holder is placed into an instrument that measures the exact amount of particles that pass through the filter. The amount of particles that pass through the filter determines the efficiency of the filter.

Fig. 4: The filter section in the circular holder must be sealed very well before measuring the efficiency of the fitting

filter.

Fig. 5: Particles of one well-defined size are fed into the instrument that measures the efficiency of the filter. The particles are generated in the apparatus (see photo) from ammonium sulphate, and the generated particles are then sorted by size.