Making a difference: Madison makers build safety equipment for frontlines of COVID-19 fight

A tension fabric structures manufacturing company in Maine has repurposed their facility and transformed their local workforce to create grade-one medical masks for the local hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic. Because the company uses only U.S.-made materials, they have been able to avoid supply chain interruptions and now plans to continue making masks as part of their standard business model even after the pandemic passes.

Many Chicago distilleries are utilizing their abundance of high-proof alcohol to create hand sanitizer to fill a gap in the market due to the coronavirus pandemic. While a portion of the product is being donated to first responders and frontline workers, this new business endeavor is also helping distillery owners keep their employees on payroll and their businesses open.

In the United Kingdom, a grassroots network called Scrub Hub is gathering groups of volunteers to sew scrubs for hospital workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic. The groups are self-organizing, raising money on their own to buy the fabric, and have so far gathered thousands of people across the UK to help.

In Olympia, Washington, the local Washington Stars Quilt Guild is hard at work sewing protective face coverings and masks for first responders and frontline health workers in need. The face masks are intended to protect the exterior of the high demand N95 masks.

During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, volunteers across Belarus worked together to collect and deliver personal protective equipment to frontline workers, despite the Belarusian government denying the spread of the coronavirus. Using social media to organize, the volunteers "served as a kind of SWAT team able to bypass the bureaucracy to obtain the necessary equipment."

A group of tech-savy Swarthmore College alumni are helping to get a surplus of personal protective equipment into the hands of the medical professionals who need it most. Tapping into communities where it's not uncommon to have spare PPE due to environmental reasons such as wildfires, the group created a database that pairs donors with recipients. The process has allowed for more than 666,000 masks transferred to health care workers nationwide.

A chance encounter sparked by a Facebook post led to the creation of RVs 4 MDs, a Facebook group pairing donated recreational vehicles for front-line medical workers who needed to distance themselves from their families while still living at home. Created in late March, the group in its first two months matched 1,460 workers with donated temporary housing. The arrangements can be awkward, with parents camped out in the family home's driveway, unable to have physical contact with their children. But they have enabled medical workers to stay connected with their families at no cost.

Across Colorado, grassroots groups have come together to create homemade masks for the state’s most vulnerable populations to protect against COVID-19. Two of those populations are Denver’s Downtown Detention Center and Denver County Jail. Groups like Dena’s Mask Making Army, the Mask Mavens, and even some AA and sober living communities have rallied together – virtually, of course – to use their sewing skills to fill the mask needs, about 3 masks per person, for those experiencing incarceration.

Altavian, a Gainesville, Florida based engineering company has figured out how to mass produce reusable N95 masks for healthcare workers using 3D printing technology. The mask – crucial in protecting healthcare workers against COVID-19 – is made from a common material, and with funding from donations, the company is able to produce close to 1,000 each day.

Battelle labs in rural Ohio is decontaminating n95 masks for health care workers as personal protective equipment remains in short supply amidst COVID-19. Granted emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, the lab runs a separate tent station for their decontamination efforts, which follow tight structures and protocol.