Schools join coronavirus fight
Harmony Public Schools and HCC are making protective medical gear
Mehmet Gokcek stared in amazement several weeks ago as images from Italy showed hospitals packed with patients coughing and heaving from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Health care workers in that country already were pleading for more personal protective equipment, including N95 masks, plastic face shields, surgical gowns and gloves.
Then the virus made its way to Texas. Even after his Harmony Public School was forced to close to help slow the spread of the virus, the engineering and technology curriculum coordinator knew he and other employees had the capability to help.
“Hearing all these stories, I realized at some point in the U.S. we might hit the same point Italy is experiencing now,” Gokcek said. “I figured we had to find ways to make our own PPEs.”
The way, it turned out, was the school’s 3D printer.
Gokcek said he and two Harmony
interns finished their first prototypes last week. Once more raw material arrives, they will be able to crank out about 2,000 plastic face shields in the following six weeks, he said.
They will not be alone. Houston Community College workers hope to make about 30,000 face shields a day with in
dustrial 3D printers and laser cutters.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Thursday signed a waiver to allow HCC to manufacture the shields, designating the work as “essential critical infrastructure.”
“This is a huge deal,” Hidalgo said. “They are working on a prototype right now. But that’s the kind of thing we’re granting a waiver. So, I’m very proud to have granted them the essential critical infrastructure status for them to be able to work toward producing those shields.”
State leaders this week urged schools and colleges to donate or manufacture whatever they could to help health care professionals in their fight to treat patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Officials in Harris and Chambers counties have raised alarms that their stocks of personal protective equipment for doctors and first responders are in short supply.
Kurt Ewen, HCC’s vice chancellor of strategy, planning and institutional effectiveness, said health officials began reaching out to the college earlier this week to see if it could manufacture protective medical equipment.
Already stressed about switching nearly 100,000 HCC students to online classes by Monday, Ewen said the task seemed unmanageable until college leaders began to consider what could happen if they did not act. Then they began seeing how shortages of medical supplies have wreaked havoc on New York City and New
Orleans.
“We can see the writing on the wall where this can potentially go,” Ewen said. “We’re hoping for the best but planning for the worst. So if there’s a way we can support the local community, we’re going to do what we can.”
HCC also has several industrial sewing machines that could fabricate surgical gowns, face masks and hair netting if the need arises and once employees can track down raw materials.
Ewen said the face shields, which HCC is manufacturing in partnership with the nonprofit maker space TX/RX Labs, will cost about $3 each to make.
Over at Harmony, Gokcek said each shield his team makes takes about five hours to print and costs $1 to manufacture, all of which will come out of the school’s budget, for now.
Finding raw materials already has proven to be a challenge for Gokcek, who said a for-profit company bought out the plastics supply he had ordered last week.
“As long as we have supplies, we can continue production,” Gokcek said. “This fight with COVID-19 looks like it could last a year, and we want to provide supplies to first responders and folks at ER services as long as we can.”