MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE — Hospital supply closets are starting to look like picked-over aisles at a grocery store.
Instead of empty shelves where the toilet paper and soup should be, hospitals are running low on the basic safety equipment they need to keep their doctors, nurses and patients safe.
But across Minnesota, volunteers are at work, filling the gaps in the medical supply chain with little more than 3-D printers and goodwill.
Working around the clock from their own homes, they’ve built thousands of protective face shields to give away to any hospital, hospice, nursing home, clinic or health care worker who needs one.
“We’re close to 90 volunteers, [working] 24 hours a day,” said Tyler Cooper, co-owner of Nordeast Makers, a co-working space in northeast Minneapolis for people who don’t let a pandemic stop them from making themselves useful.
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Nordeast shared the design files with St. Cloud State University. Now banks of 3-D printers and laser cutters in a school lab are churning out an assembly line of safety gear for the hospital.
“We were getting printed hundreds of face shields a day,” Maddy said.
With a steady supply of help close to home, CentraCare no longer needs equipment from Nordeast. But a lot of other facilities do.
Read more: Minnesota volunteers help to fill broken links in hospital supply chain
