Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has said that the tech giant donated 20 million N95 respiratory face masks to help combat the ongoing activities against coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The N95 masks, recommended by CDC, protect against most airborne particles, including the Coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Owing to the shortage of protective equipment, Apple has also started producing 1 million face shields, a week, for the protection of health care workers dealing with COVID-19 patients. Tim Cook has called all the activities against the coronavirus pandemic a ‘global effort.’Â
“This is a truly global effort, and we’re working continuously and closely with governments at all levels to ensure these are donated to places of greatest need,” Tim Cook said in a video on Sunday.
Watching the United States fighting against the pandemic situations, White Hous has issued a ‘Memorandum on Order Under the Defense Production Act Regarding 3M Company’ to push the only company – 3M – that makes N95 masks in the U.S., to ramp up the production of face masks. Besides that, many other companies, including Apple, started producing face masks to add their contributions to this great cause.
First, Apple announced that it would donate 10 million protective face masks for the U.S. and millions more in Europe. The company now says that it has doubled the production and now will give 20 million face masks for the protection of doctors and nurses, fighting against the coronavirus.
Tim Cook says that the company has involved its workforce, including design, engineering, operations, and packaging teams, to work on production and shipment of face shields for medical workers.
The delivery for the first shipment of face shields is already done to Kaiser Hospital facilities in the Santa Clara Valley last week. “We plan to ship over 1 million by the end of this week and over 1 million per week after that,” said Tim Cook. Each box of shields contain 100 adjustable plastic face shields that can be assembled in less than two minutes, Tim Cook further added to his video message.
Apple is closely working with health care professionals and the U.S. government to get ship the medical equipment where needed. “We are closely coordinating with medical professionals and government officials across the U.S. to get these to where they’re needed most urgently,” Tim Cook added further. The company has distributed the face masks and face shields in the United States, but Apple plans to expand the distribution globally.Â
Tesla, Salesforce, and INKSmith contributing to global efforts against COVID-19
Tesla has also air-shipped 1200+ ventilators from China to California and has now reopened its New York Gigafactory to produce ventilators to fight against the COVID-19. Tesla engineers are producing the ventilators from car parts of Model 3. The components include HVAC and infotainment systems to control the airflow and suspension air tanks, and the touchscreen is used as the controller.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said that they have already donated an emergency reserve of 720,000 face masks and will source millions of more to help people get out of this pandemic safely. Facebook also announced that the company would invest $100 million in the news industry under Facebook Journalism Project to support journalism throughout the epidemic.
“Today we’re announcing an additional $100 million investment to support the news industry—$25 million in emergency grant funding for local news through the Facebook Journalism Project, and $75 million in additional marketing spend to move money over to news organizations around the world,” said Campbell Brown, VP Global News Partnerships at Facebook.
Salesforce.com Inc. has also donated PPE incl medical goggles, face shields, and protective suits to New York State with the help of the Chinese Alibaba Group. The CEO of Salesforce.com confirmed the shipment of donation to New York in a tweet.
INKSmith, a startup giving hands-on learning opportunities for STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Arts and Maths) competencies and design thinking, is also contributing to global efforts making face shields to cope with the high demand for medical equipment.
“I think in the short term, we’re going to scale up to meet the needs of the province soon. After that, we’re going to meet the demands of Canada,” said Jeremy Hedges, CEO of INKSmith.
The coronavirus outbreak is continuously dominating the word and has so far infected more than 1,288,372 people around the world, out of which 70,569 patients have died. The United States only has a massive number for infected people stating 337,309 in total to date.Â
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Featured image: AP
