Abstract
Background: COVID-19, which occurred at the end of December 2019, has
evolved into a global public health threat. COVID-19’s high infectivity
and mortality prompt governments and scientific community to respond
quickly to the outbreak of the pandemic. The application of personal
protective equipment (PPE) is of great significance in overcoming the
epidemic situation. Although there were many studies about PPE and
COVID-19, there is no study about bibliometric analysis of these
studies. This study aims to provide a general overview of studies on PPE
and COVID-19. Methods: On October 07, 2021, the Web of Science (WOS)
Core Collection database was used to identify documents on PPE and
COVID-19. HistCite and VOSviewer softwares were used for citation
analysis and visualization mapping. Results: A total of 1462 documents
authored by 6993 authors and published in 750 journals were included in
the final analysis. The most prolific author was Macintyre CR. The USA
was the most productive country with 463 published documents. The
leading journal was Plos One. Network visualization map showed that USA
was the largest international collaboration network. The keyword
“COVID-19” had the strongest total link strengths (TLS) and largest
number of occurrences. The New England Journal of Medicine was the
leading source with highest TLS. The University of Toronto had the
highest number of links and the highest TLS. Conclusions: The
bibliometric analysis of PPE and COVID-19 provides an overall
perspective, and the appreciation and study of these influential
publications are very useful for future research.