Graham Merrigan published a video on Twitter showing a group of people in Dublin that found a brilliant way to come together during the pandemic outbreak and enjoy social distancing.

Residents in a block of flats in Dublin started playing bingo from their balconies calling out the numbers over a speaker.

In Lisbon, workers from Casa Fernando Pessoa and from EGEAC (Empresa de Gestão de Equipamentos e Animação Cultural, E.M.) started the initiative ‘Readings to the Ear’ to maintain the connection between Casa Fernando Pessoa and the public during COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this initiative, workers from those institutions are offering to call anyone interested and read them small poems and other texts.

COmVIDas was born thanks to Rita Almeida e Brito (fourth-year nursing student), in partnership with a medical student, Filipa Paiva Couceiro (ageing psychologist), and two communication specialists. COmVIDas aims at organizing a help network for institutions that support the elderly who are facing difficulties due to the pandemic.

To help in the fight against COVID-19, Medtronic is issuing a special permissive license, sharing the full design specifications, product manuals, design documents and software code for its Puritan Bennett (PB) 560 portable ventilator hardware.

The PB 560 is compact and lightweight and can be easily moved around. The design was originally introduced in 2010, it is qualified and safe for medical use.

The 3D Mask PT is a project started on the 19th of March 2020, when the team produced and delivered a batch of visors to several hospitals in Lisbon to be used, tested and approved by their medical teams.

3D Mask PT aims not only to print visors but also to unite individual volunteers, with access to a 3D printer, for a common cause. Since the beginning of the project, the design of the visor has evolved, reducing the printing time, and the number of volunteers has increased exponentially. The team was able to deliver hundreds of visors to 5 hospitals in the Lisbon area.

Mark Chipperfield created a team of carers to take care of his mum at home when she diagnosed with Alzheimer.

‘I went to look around a number of homes. But all I saw were grey headed people with glazed eyes not doing much at all. I couldn’t see anything positive for her in that setting, and as I had promised my father I would look after her I decided I had to organise something myself,’ Mark said.

Tim Swenson and his wife Donna have a son, Jeff, who remained paralysed after a car accident in 1998. "But I always thought about how can I get Jeff back outdoors and off the hard surface?" Tim said. Having 30 years of experience in the motorsports business, Tim was able to design an off-road electric chair to help his son and others like him.

Kim Magraw developed the sneeze guard after receiving a call from a customer asking him to create something that would work as a barrier between people.

"It places a barrier so anybody who sneezes or has a sneeze or is breathing, the virus is unable to be transferred directly across," Magraw describes.

More than 1200 sneeze guards were sold in under a weekend. Magraw said he's had to hire more people to keep up with the demand for the products. Prices for the sneeze guard range from $150 to $400.

The crowd solving startup called Zindi, established in South Africa in 2018, has been building a database of data scientists across Africa. Zindi’s aim is to aggregate pressing private or public-sector challenges and match the solution seekers to problem solvers.

Covid19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) is an online free and open resource for the global researchers’ community. It was born with the idea of helping researchers in the fight against Covid19.

CORD-19 combines more than 29,000 academic articles on Covid19 SARS-CoV-2 to be used by the scientific community worldwide.

Website shares instructions on how to make a face shield at home to use as last resort, when proper protective gears are not available.

The materials needed are:
- small plastic bucket with handle
- clear plastic sheet
- double-sided tape
- flat elastic

It takes only 15 minutes and the process is easy. The face shield should be disinfected before use and it is recommended for a single-use only.

UC San Francisco physician-scientists launched a new initiative, the COVID-19 Citizen Science (CCS) to allow adults in the world to become citizen-scientists, with the aim of better understanding the pandemic outbreak.

US San Francisco researchers launched a tracking app after stating that the spread of the virus has varied across individuals and regions and the factors that determine how it affects individuals are not clear.

The Global hack is an online hackathon designed to share and rapidly develop ideas for solutions in the face of the current crisis, as well as to build resilience post-pandemic.

There are 12 tracks team can choose from to develop their solutions, based on the Sustainable development goals of the United Nations. The teams work on the platform Slack to brainstorm and create their solutions before sharing them with the community.

University students Suraj Joshi and Jagruti Gohil started the initiative Feed The Workers, bringing together restaurants and delivery drivers to give free meals to NHS staff.

They delivered more than 350 meals to healthcare staff who are working to treat patients affected by Covid19, in four different hospitals. “My friend’s mum is the inspiration behind Feed The Workers - she was really grateful to the NHS for taking care of her so well recently and wanted to say thanks by offering them free meals,” Suraj said.

Giovanni Becchina, developed a prototype of a reusable mask with an interchangeable filter to fight the shortage of protective gears during the Covid19 pandemic.

The mask can be washed in water and 5% bleach. The filter used is a 3M 5953 P3 or 3M 5n1, certified with the filtering percentage equal to 95%.
The mask is made up of three parts: filter, mask with valves, soft part. Giovanni explains how each part must be printed to obtain for a better outcome. He also gives instructions on how to assemble the components and how to test the prototype.

As the coronavirus crisis continues, people in the UK are doing trying to help those in need and inject some joy into life.

In Cheshire, residents on a street are doing socially distanced communal dance sessions to exercise during lockdown.

Janet Woodcock, a fitness instructor came up with this idea after one of her neighbours said she was missing her exercise class. “It’s really simple stuff, but it’s about people moving, seeing one another and just having fun really,” she said.

Scientists from Oxford University and Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research (OSCAR) have developed a rapid testing technology for Covid19.

The new test is fast, it gives the result in just half an hour, and does not need a complicated instrument. Moreover the technology is very sensitive, so it detects infections also at early stages, potentially helping to reduce the spread of the Covid19.

Scientists from the University of Massachusetts developed a portable device, FluSense, powered by artificial intelligence to detect coughing and crowd size in real time. The device analyses the data which are used to monitor trends in flu-like illnesses such as Covid19.

A college student from the Eastern Kentucky University is aiding the deaf and hard of hearing community by creating face masks that are suitable for them.

"I just saw that people were making masks on Facebook for everyone to have instead of the throwaway masks, and I was like, what about the deaf and hard of hearing population?"

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham academic and research centre AMMACHI Labs in Kerala in collaboration with Glasgow University in Scotland have developed Pepe, the robot that engages students and encourage them to wash their hands properly.