COLUMBUS – States are turning to each other, private industries and anyone who can donate respirators, gloves and other supplies in a desperate bid to get them to doctors, nurses and other front-line workers battling the coronavirus.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that the federal stockpile is officially depleted at least through this month.
Governor Mike DeWine announced that 19 manufacturers have partnered with three hospital groups to produce 750,000 to 1 million face shields, which can be sterilized and reused, for the Ohio Department of Health stockpile over the next five weeks.
He says 1,500 companies that make products, from toys to auto parts, volunteered to contribute to the effort.
“This reinforces what we know about Ohio companies, they are generous and will answer the call when needed. Together, we are going to protect our protectors and strengthen our manufacturing sector,” DeWine said.
The newly formed Ohio Manufacturing Alliance is the cornerstone of the DeWine administration’s drive to make personal protection equipment in Ohio when it cannot be purchased.
-0-
Rickenbacker International Airport and the logistics companies that use the airport are playing a key role in responding to demands for personal protective equipment, gloves, gowns, goggles, masks, hand sanitizer, ventilators and other desperately needed items in the fight against the coronavirus, said Sarah McQuaide communications and media relations manager for the Columbus Regional Airport Authority.
Ventilator equipment delivered to Rickenbacker aboard a Kalitta Airlines freighter April 6 was flown by helicopter to a Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Michigan.
RCS Logistics, which normally ships fashion products, is now receiving three weekly flights of medical supplies out of Shanghai.
Wen-Parker Logistics is coordinating additional weekly flights of PPE from Vietnam and Thailand.
Over 170 metric tons of PPE shipped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency from to Rickenbacker arrived earlier this month.
Rickenbacker is one of the world’s only cargo-dedicated airports.
-0-
The U.S. Food and Drug administration has approved a sterile solution and swabs developed by Ohio State University to relieve a critical shortage of COVID-19 test kit components.
A team of researchers, working overnight, created within 24 hours an in-house “recipe” to make the crucial sterile liquid called viral transport media, a salt solution buffered to stabilize the virus so it can be transported on swabs to testing sites, OSU Wexner Medical Center spokeswoman Eileen Scahill said.
Wexner Medical Center staff, working with faculty and staff in the university’s colleges of Engineering and Dentistry, also created and 3-D printed more than 50,000 new swabs for COVID-19 test kits, which Scahill says will be shared with hospitals across Ohio, allowing more people to be tested.
A shortage of test kits has been blamed for a delay in compiling data on the coronavirus spread in Ohio, which has hindered accurate predictions of the progress of the pandemic and efforts to control it, according to state health director Dr. Amy Acton.