As healthcare centers across the city brace for an onslaught of COVID-19 patients, local makers, inventors, designers and businesses have pivoted to producing personal protective equipment, or PPE.

Healthcare workers treating those with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases must take extra precautions, and use PPE to avoid catching the virus themselves and spreading it to other patients.

But, as workers in healthcare centers have become increasingly reliant on PPE, people across the world have been buying up the supply to use for themselves when venturing out in public — while governments didn’t act quickly enough to stock up. As a result, Philly hospitals, and others around the country and world, are already falling into a shortage of materials. On March 26, the City of Philadelphia put out a plea for residents to donate PPE like N95 respirators, gowns and goggles.

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