All change! Royal Mint’s coins make way for vital NHS visors
THE Royal Mint, which nor- mally produces millions of coins each week for the UK and 60 other countries, has joined the fight against the coronavirus.
Instead of minting coins, workers at the Governmentowned site have started maki ng face visors t o protect frontline NHS staff treating Covid-19 patients.
Engineers at the site in Llantrisant, South Wales, created a successful prototype visor within just 48 hours in a bid to plug shortages of personal protection equipment in hospitals.
Production is now moving to 24 hours a day, seven days a week as the Royal Mint receives requests to supply hospitals across the UK. A total of 750 visors were made yesterday and the aim is to increase this to 4,000 a day from Tuesday.
Leighton John, Royal Mint’s director of operations, said: ‘My sister works for the NHS and it really focuses your mind on the challenges they are facing, and the opportunity we have to support them.
‘ On Wednesday at 9am we knew nothing about medical visors, but we set our engineers the task of developing essential medical equipment which could be easily made on site – within seven hours t hey’d created a visor, and within 48 hours it was approved for mass manufacture.’
A batch of visors has already been delivered to the nearby Royal Glamorgan Hospital. Huw Davies, the hospital’s clinical director for anaesthetics, said: ‘It was quite emotional for our teams when they came in and offered their support and expertise to help keep us safe.’
The Royal Mint has appealed for help sourcing the 1mmthick clear plastic for the visors which is in short supply.