The PPE paid for by you...

Less than 24 hours after being made, the crucial Mail Force Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was handed over.

Box after box of aprons were unloaded at a depot in the Midlands which is the nerve centre of the NHS’s PPE operation.

The donations were quickly logged on the NHS system, ready to be shipped out to the doctors, nurses and paramedics all over the country who desperately need them.

Yesterday’s shipment was the first mass delivery of Mail Force aprons under a new partnership set up only last week. The Mail Force charity — set up by the Daily

Mail and its partners to help solve the PPE crisis — has begun working with the Issa Group, a Lancashire-based family business that has turned local factories into PPE production lines.

Mail Force has ordered 1.5 million aprons, to be delivered by the end of this month.

Yesterday’s lorry contained the first half-million of these, plus another half-million that were ordered directly by the NHS.

Thousands of pieces of vital PPE were also en route to Scotland yesterday. The delivery, including 35,000 gowns, was picked up from suppliers in Preston, Lancashire, and will be distributed to frontline NHS staff and care workers.

Dozens of staff at the vast NHS depot in the Midlands — the size of three football pitches — are working around the clock to process donations and purchases of PPE.

Senior manager Laura Brawn said: ‘Everyone is so proud to be working here. It’s long hours and hard work, but every time you see a lorry go out with a big load of PPE, taking it to the front line, it gives us all an immense sense of purpose.

‘We all see the stories about nurses and doctors having to work in those wards, and it motivates every one of us to get on and do the job.

‘There is a great team effort on the warehouse floor, and everyone knows what they are doing and why. We’ve just got to get on with it, and make sure the PPE gets to the right places as fast as possible.’

The Mail Force aprons were manufactured on Thursday at a factory in Blackburn.

Every apron is about 30 per cent thicker than the cheaper imported aprons usually bought by the NHS, making them more robust and less likely to tear.

Issa Dasu Patel, new products manager at the Issa Group, said: ‘There were very few of these aprons made in the UK before the Covid crisis. Now we are producing millions, and getting them to the frontline very quickly.

‘We are selling them pretty much at cost price, which keeps the prices down and at the same time keeps all our staff in employment.

‘Mail Force, and the donations from Mail readers, combined with our ability to manufacture these aprons quickly, means we are getting PPE to where it is needed fast. All this has been achieved in less than a week.’

Mr Dasu Patel drove from Lancashire to the Midlands depot because he wanted to see his aprons handed over.

‘I wanted to witness it, because it is a really proud moment,’ he said. ‘We are all doing something to help our country, and that is motivating all our employees.

‘Everyone knows someone affected by Covid. This is the closest our generation comes to a wartime-style effort.’

‘We’re all so proud to be working here’

THIS was the magnificent sight yesterday as one million protective aprons were delivered to the NHS.