The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a strain on healthcare services globally. Hospitals need personal protective equipment, or PPE, in order to keep healthcare workers and patients safe, but many don’t have enough to go around.
Vandals stepped up alongside Moscow community members to take on the challenge close to home. Several teams at the University of Idaho have been creating PPE and donating it to Gritman Medical Center and other local healthcare providers.
When the UI Department of Theatre Arts suspended the performance season, costume design faculty and students were left without projects to continue. Ginger Sorensen, a clinical associate professor, worried the work-study students she oversaw would not get paid. She wanted to give them a meaningful project, so she and her students began sewing masks for Gritman.
“It’s not like I’m sitting down and sewing for eight hours. I sit down and I can make four or five an hour if I don’t get interrupted,” Sorensen said. “But I have teaching classes and prepping classes and I still have to turn in my receipts from the beginning of the semester, I still have to do my job.”
Sorensen has personally made over 100 masks but does not know how many her four work-study and two graduate students have made. She has been creating two types of cloth masks: surgical masks that do not hug the face and masks that cover and extend the longevity of N95 masks.
Faculty in the UI College of Engineering are working on projects to assist healthcare workers as well. Associate Professors Gabriel Potirniche and Joel Perry lead a team creating face masks and face shields.
Potirniche manages the team creating face shields. The shields use a slightly tweaked design from Prusa, a 3D printing company with a community that shares designs for everything from board games to protective equipment.
The team assembles the shields from a laser-cut shield, 3D printed support parts and a rubber strap.
Perry is leading a team to create a mask that will secure close to the face like an N95 mask. The mask his team is designing consists of two rings that snap together to keep a breathable fabric in place. A team in the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences is working to design the fabric for the mask.
Potirniche and Perry work with the Public Health Idaho North
Central District to distribute the PPE they create. Potirniche said the team
creates between 30 and 50 shields per day depending on the thickness of the
shield material and hope to make at least 500 to 1000 shields.
Peter Mundt, Gritman’s director of community relations and marketing, said the medical center has been overwhelmed by the community’s generosity. Mundt said many individuals and organizations have donated cloth masks, unused N95 masks and 3D printed other forms of PPE. As of April 26, Gritman had received 2,546 donated masks. Gritman’s donation goal is 8000 masks.
“Every donation of PPE or a sewn mask helps protect someone that someone loves,” Mundt said. “That’s what’s so critical.”
For information on PPE donation opportunities, check our local roundup here.