They're donating a million face shields by the end of the week to hospitals and medical facilities with the greatest need, and 20m by the end of the month, designed by Apple and sourced via their existing supply chain.
The cutting tools (dies) for cutting flat sheets like this can be made in literally one day by the type of factories that Apple works with (less if you're in a real hurry).
I visited a cardboard packaging factory near Shenzhen before; They use a combination of a CNC router to cut out slots in the die base plate and a CNC folding machine to pre-fold the cutting angles into the cutting blades.
Smaller hole / lozenge shape cutters are sourced in as pre-fabricated components.
The design is very smart from a manufacturability point of view, I expect we will see other factories making similar face shields in the 100s of millions shortly. Which is great... One of our local supermarkets is already using similar face shields for their customer-facing staff.
Going only off of the video I saw of Tim Cook with the shield...
The entire shield is a clear plastic film. It’s held against the forehead using a fabric strap. The shield appears to be either die cut or laser cut, which explains the production speed. A lot of the face shields shown online are 3D printed with hard plastic components, which is a very slow process.
The material looks a lot like the clear plastic film that wraps an iPhone or even an iPad charger. The shield folds together in the same origami-like way. Based on comments about the supply chain being involved, it seems like they leveraged the existing manufacturing process for Apple product packaging and thickened the plastic.
3D printing seems crazy for a single sheet of bendy plastic that needs to be mass produced. Cutting them out by hand with a knife or a scissors would be better than 3d printing, never mind laser or die cutting.
I'm not sure what the person above is talking about. I haven't seen a single face shield design involving a 3d printed piece that didn't also require a sheet of bendy plastic cut to fit with that 3d printed piece.
I was laser cutting the clear parts of the shields with a local makerspace. We ran out of the thicker material that was being used, now there is a worldwide shortage. We were making for doctors and nurses in hospitals, so we wanted something more substantial. These look pretty flimsy, but are probably better than nothing. We failed to realize the supply of our material was not infinite. We actually had a fair number of people 3D printing, but that was still a major bottleneck.
These are only used by doctors and nurses when treating patients with open airways at very close range to protect from direct splatters with body fluids. Eg when intubating a patient that’s having explosive coughing fits. They are also part of a complete protective system including a mask, elasticated hair cover, full body wrap aprons and long arm gloves. There is no point using a shield without the rest if the gear because if you are in a situation where you need the shield, you also need the rest as well.
Most medical professionals don’t even wear this full kit routinely in hospitals, let alone when they are out in public, so there’s no need for the public to use them in general working conditions.
> There is no point using a shield without the rest if the gear because if you are in a situation where you need the shield, you also need the rest as well.
This is the same class of bullshit the WHO, CDC and FDA were pushing about face masks less than a week ago. There is no way this is worse than nothing. If a face shield used with no other PPE reduces the viral load the average healthcare worker is exposed to by 1% fewer people will be infected and those who do will be more likely to recover as their immune system has more time to ramp up defenses.
This will reduce R0. There is no plausible mechanism of action for a face shield to work as PPE together with a respirator, or as part of a full suit of PPE, under which it provides no protection when used alone.
correct. it's not worse than nothing. it's literally not possible to be "worse than nothing".
However to your point it only protects against spray. So, yes, it's better than nothing if you're in front of someone coughing / vomiting directly on you.
BUT it doesn't do much of anything for the aerosolized particles. Better masks has coverings above the top to prevent those from coming in from above, but in this case apple appears to be going for quantity and speed over quality.
> if a face shield used with no other PPE reduces the viral load the average healthcare worker is exposed to by 1%
If you are practicing social distancing then a face shield really provides essentially zero protection. I have seen no evidence or even suggestion by a medical professional that wearing these while keeping a distance from infected individuals would provide ANY protection.
The main problem is aerosolized material (also direct contact but gloves and not touching your face address that). These don't help with aerosolized material. It just floats around them and gets inhaled anyway.
You want these if you are up close to someone who is infected or potentially infected because mouths spew forth bad things: vomit, coughing, etc. and you frequently don't have time to jump out of the way.
There are about a million infected individuals right now, and climbing, and each hospitalised patient in ITU may need these procedures several times a day. An ITU team performing the procedure might consist of 2 to 4 people and the shields should be discarded every time. The number of patients is also rising rapidly, so demand is very high.
When you see doctors and nurses in full scrubs with face shields doing their shopping, then you know you need this equipment. However if you're really concerned there are other options[0].
Maybe I'm missing something, but the page literally has a section titled "Clean and reuse your face shield" and lists the chemicals that should be used to clean it.
The doctor or nurse probably won't be able to do that process everytime they use the mask. Like other reusable hospital supplies it will be collected somewhere to be cleaned in bulk. The point above is that so many will be used in a short span of time that even a 24 or 12 hour cleaning rotation will not keep up without large numbers being available.
this should only be done when you're so screwed that you don't have clean ones available. This is literally war-time thinking. It's also completely impractical to do at hospital scale, but if it's your only option...
