While Amazon sells millions of products made by other companies, the tech giant does have a manufacturing branch where it produces its own products. On top of that, it also has a pretty substantial supply chain and logistics department. So when the company saw the nationwide shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers, it figured that it could help address that need.
In a blog post published Thursday, Amazon mentioned how it was inspired by a group in Washington state that was using 3-D printing to create face shields for medical professionals on the frontline. So in early March, the tech giant started designing and producing face shields of their own. The company created a design that was easy to produce and worked with the National Institutes of Health to get its approval.
So far, the company has donated almost of these 10,000 face shields, and it’s currently on track to deliver 20,000 more in the next few weeks. But even that is not enough to meet demand.
Now Amazon is planning to scale up production to mass produce these shields. The company aims to make hundreds of thousands of them over the next few weeks.
These face shields will be listed on Amazon’s website for sale. The company is looking to prioritize these masks for frontline workers first, but eventually it will open up sales to everyone. The company also says that it will sell them for much less than what other reusable face shields are going for — at almost one-third of the price.
“It’s important that these critical supplies get to healthcare and government organizations and we want to help make that happen —whether that’s working with the open-source community, donating the shields, or selling these essential supplies,” Amazon VP Brad Porter wrote in the blog post. “We are committed to leveraging our scale for good and putting our ability to innovate quickly into use to support communities.”
