Aston Martin steps up.

The coronavirus has turned world automakers into scrappy entities, and as they quickly pivot, we're seeing some seriously wonderful engineering at work. As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in numerous nations, Aston Martin is the latest to toss its hat into the ring to help.

Keep track of the coronavirus pandemic.

The British carmaker said on Friday it not only has face shields and protective gowns nearly ready for mass production, but it's designing a new piece of protective equipment for health care workers.

Aston Martin cited a need from health care workers for a new kind of protective piece specifically for use with patients going on ventilators. When a health care professional needs to put a patient diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes, on a ventilator, there's a great risk of respiratory droplets to enter the air during the intubation and extubation process. So, Aston Martin and its partner Multimatic are working to create a new box-shaped shield to protect the health care worker during this process.

The shield will be a compact, one-piece design that Aston Martin said will let health care workers even stack them in ICU wards so they won't take up a tremendous amount of space. All the while, the box shield will still provide all the access health care workers need to work with patients on ventilators and goes over a patient's upper body.

The new design is now in a trial period with local hospitals in the UK. The company also submitted a gown design to the National Health Service for approval and Aston Martin believes it could create 750 gowns per week. As for face shields, the first batch of 150 will reach hospitals next week.

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Aston Martin designing new protection for health care workers - CNET