Staying away from social gatherings and sitting at home is the utmost important contribution you can make in the fight against COVID-19 right now. But if that is not enough for you, a particular set of skills can help the medical workforce like never before. The skill of sewing!
With only a needle and a thread, everyone can now help protect our already strained medical workforce from the disease. As with these things and a little skill, a very important medical equipment can be made, right at home - Face masks.
Masks can be sewn at home easily using a piece of cloth. Interestingly, such cloth masks are even better than the ones that many are trying to print using 3D printing. Cloth masks can be produced quickly, can be thoroughly washed and can be reused multiple times while that is not the case with 3D printed masks. Even the regular N95 masks cannot be used multiple times and are good only for a limited time period.
An important thing to note here is that such cloth masks are not able to stop or filter the virus but they can still provide protection to a person¡¯s face against any droplets or other lesser contaminants.
OSCMS, short for Open-Source COVID19 Medical Supplies, a group formed to evaluate, design, validate, and source the fabrication of open source emergency medical supplies around the world, sheds light on how one can go about making such masks. A doc shared by the group suggests that people start making these masks by joining a local community (of course, online) or creating one if it is not there in an area. A collective effort towards making masks will result in a larger number of masks produced and hence, a larger impact.
The doc also highlights the nature of masks that one should aim for. A clear directive is to ¡°only make masks that have been vetted by medical professionals.¡± Another one states that no latex material should be used in the mask while another important one stresses that an information sheet must be included with the masks produced.
Mask makers will eventually have to connect with the local hospitals or medical agencies to get to know the exact details of the masks required. A US based observation for the same can be found by clicking the link here.
Hospitals in the countries battling a large number of cases of COVID-19 are already short on such medical equipment. In such troubled times, any contribution towards providing the right equipment to our workforce will help. This is exactly why some of the biggest manufacturers from across industries have come together to help produce masks and ventilators.
With individual makers also being able to contribute to the cause, there is a high chance that any shortage of such medical supplies can be met. Even if not for medical purposes, individuals can use them while stepping out of their houses during a lockdown. So if you can make masks sitting at home, it may surely come in handy for someone.