Kickstart: More attention for swab shortages

One of the stories we've been following at Plastics News is the work to mold millions of nasopharyngeal swabs for coronavirus testing. These long, flexible swabs are needed to reach the back of the nose or throat to gather samples and determine who has an active COVID-19 infection.

In early April, Bill Bregar wrote about Wisconsin injection molder Teel Plastics Inc. and its work supplying Puritan Medical Products. That story has since been updated with work by a team including the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Minnesota's Protolabs Inc. and Innovative Product Brands Inc. of California to fill the pipeline.

Now the shortage of swabs is getting wider attention, with National Public Radio's Morning Edition and an in-depth report on swabs.

"I don't think the United States was prepared," Timothy Templet, Puritan's executive vice president of global sales, told NPR. "That includes us, Puritan. It includes our customers. And it includes the government ... And now it gets really nerve-wracking to think that we may be in this for another couple years."

We're starting to get a glimpse inside auto plants preparing to restart production in North America next week, and it involves a lot of protective plastic.

FCA Automotive showed off some of the changes to more than 57 million square feet of manufacturing space in the U.S., Canada and Mexico in a May 12 news release. That includes analyzing nearly 17,000 workstations for social distancing, then redesigning or modifying about 4,700 of those.

In some cases, that meant painting a yellow box on the floor as a reminder to people to stay in their safe zone, and not wander too close to other workers. At others, it meant installing acrylic barriers. In addition, the plants hung vinyl welding curtains overhead along some sections of assembly lines.

"There is no question that coming to work will look and feel different," FCA CEO Mike Manley said.

The YouTube video series Engineering Explained is taking a close look at the work that went into Ford's PAPR respirator program, coordinated with 3M.

The 11-minute video includes a look at how the automaker approved individual pieces such as a fan — based on a seat fan in Ford's F-150 truck — how input from its human-machine interface team (using data from creating seats) was used to influence its design so it would be comfortable for a range of bodies and the work by supplier Mann + Hummel on the HEPA filter.

Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle received the first Ford PAPRs in early May.