Teachers from Norwich School have started making protective visors for healthcare staff and other key workers, following concerns about the lack of personal protective equipment for frontline staff.
It comes as the number of confirmed patients with Covid-19 at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital (NNUH) increased and the number of cases of coronavirus jumped in recent days.
Art and Design teachers at the school have given up their Easter break to ensure that more equipment reaches medical staff as soon as possible. They have also shared the designs with other schools to enable as many of these visors are made as possible.
Ed Cann, the Art and Design teacher at Norwich School, who started the effort, said:
“We have had numerous requests from the local medical community for the school's support. Following prototyping on Sunday, we managed to produce 138 on Monday using the materials we had in stock.”
The first delivery has gone to a number of venues which had directly approached the school for assistance: a hospital, a GP surgery and a hospice in Norfolk, as well as hospitals in London. As well as the newly constructed face-shields, the delivery contains approximately 100 pairs of goggles and 30 boxes of gloves, donated by the school from existing supplies in the school’s science department.
The school now hopes to continue production, with members of the Art & Design Department volunteering to operate the school’s laser cutter and perform other parts of the construction process. Materials are being sourced to match the capacity of the school’s production process which is able to produce at least 150 face-shields each day.
Norwich School Head Master, Steffan Griffiths said:
“Norwich School has remained open to supervise the children of key workers and is now pleased to be able to use its resources to support the NHS in another way. I am grateful to my colleagues for giving their time and using their expertise to make equipment which enables health workers to assist those in need. It is important that everyone plays their part in helping the community respond to the coronavirus outbreak and we will continue to explore ways in which we can be useful to these wider efforts.”
