This Hermon company's work dried up when coronavirus hit. Now it's making masks for the long run.

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 Montana, a handful of manufacturers have adapted their facilities to make products and materials that help healthcare workers safely work on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic. From face shields to liquid transport mediums, these businesses are finding new ways to play a larger role in the efforts to contain the virus, while also keeping their employees working.

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."

Innovation labs, makerspaces, and fabrication laboratories are just a few of the entities that helping to address the shortage of personal protective equipment in hospitals by creating face shields and masks. In Madison, Wisconsin, the design for a custom-made medical face shield prototype created by Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Lab only uses three materials and has been approved by the university's infection control department. To help others join in efforts, the engineers made the design available online and it has now "been picked up by manufacturers around the world."

Businesses in the Four Corners region of the United States have shifted their production from outdoor equipment to medical equipment and have successfully solicited people from the community to help. Although the businesses don't necessarily have the capacity or facilities available to prevent medical-grade equipment and have had to rethink how their production regimes work, they have been able to make at-home protective equipment and items such as hospital gowns.

In Los Angeles, fashion industry professionals are working together to create hospital gowns from donated materials for use in hospitals. The project is also helping to employ those who have been laid off from their retail jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Day Owl is a Pittsburgh company known for producing sustainably-sourced backpacks, but in response to the pandemic they have shifted gears to producing medical-grade masks for health care workers. They began shipping out the masks in early April and expect to produce between 1,000 to 2,000 masks a day. The company is working with the support of local foundations and has already received orders from Highmark for 30,000 face shields.

Personal protective equipment has been in short supply as the pandemic caught the United States off guard. In an effort to fill the gap, a company in Louisiana called Action Specialties has been manufacturing disposable masks for healthcare workers using the blue sterilization wrap that was used to package medical instruments. There is a large supply of the wrap because demand has been down during the pandemic, so they have been working full time to produce 8,000 disposable masks each week. The masks produced will then go be distributed to hospital workers at Lafayette General Health Hospital.

As personal protective equipment becomes increasingly hard to find, university labs, engineers, and individuals are taking part in a crowdsourced effort to create alternatives. Although their 3D designs and repurposed shields don't take the place of PPE, they do act as safe back-ups for frontline workers facing a shortage.

In the Bay Area of California, organizations are repurposing their work and personal spaces to act as DIY pop-up hand sanitizer factories during the coronavirus pandemic. From donating the product to homeless shelters to installing hand washing stations and hand sanitizer dispensers throughout cities, community members are taking an active role in trying to help contain the virus.