A round up of the latest COVID-19 related innovations:
The National Emergency Library: COVID-19 has wrecked havoc with society, shutting down restaurants and businesses, and forcing nearly the entire country to submit to stay at home orders in an attempt to flatten the curve. This pandemic has obviously upended many walks of life but an often overlooked segment of the population that has been heavily affected has been academia with schools and universities shutting down and officially ended their school years early which is problematic for those people who still need to get work done.
Thankfully the Internet Archive has a solution:
“Announcing the National Emergency Library, a collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed.”
New Mask Design: The other day I wrote about the latest in mask innovation but I missed a very important update, the idea of creating masks that kill the coronavirus on contact. A design improvement that would make masks longer-lasting and safer to use.
As Fortune reports, “The coronavirus pandemic has prompted an unprecedented surge in demand for surgical masks, which offer some protection against the transmission of disease. However, masks become contaminated themselves as they filter pathogens from the air. As a result, they risk spreading more disease. That’s a design flaw researchers are currently trying to fix. They’re working to design a better mask—one that can kill viruses and bacteria, rather than just trap them.
‘Current masks don’t destroy the virus, that’s why they’ve been recommended for single use, but practically it is impossible to change the mask every few hours,’ said Choi Hyo-jick, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta. Choi has been working on a product that can provide an anti-viral coating to surgical masks to make them safer. The secret ingredient is salt.”
Scuba Mask Ventilators: If nothing else the coronavirus pandemic has created massive opportunities for innovation with the creation of a hybrid mask-ventilator made from a scuba mask being the latest and possibly best example.
As CBS News reports, “The coronavirus has claimed more than 10,000 lives in Italy, according to Johns Hopkins University. With ventilators running low, a desperate hospital in the northern part of the country is trying something new: modified scuba masks.
Doctors at the Maggiore Hospital in Parma are using a 3D printer to modify the masks so they connect to oxygen. It’s a quick fix that Dr. Franceso Minardi likens to wartime triage.”
The latest example of desperate times calling for desperate measures.
Are any of these COVID-19 related innovations the Greatest Idea Ever?
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