Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, nursing homes all over the world had to forbid visitations from the resident’s loved ones, causing a sense of loneliness and isolation.

Startup company Estimote has developed a new line of wearable devices, designed to monitor the proximity and contact level between employees at their workplace. These devices are meant to be an addition to social distancing measures and help control the transmission of the new coronavirus between coworkers who share a physical workspace.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought with it several unprecedented challenges, that have an impact on people’s overall mental health status. From the healthcare professionals working hard to fight this pandemic, to the people suffering from the effects of social isolation, many people were feeling the psychological burdens brought up by this situation.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare facilities all over the world were experiencing severe shortages of medical and protective equipment. To tackle this problem, a team from the Department of anesthesiology at the University of Florida Health developed masks that can be produced from materials that are commonly found in those healthcare facilities.

A group of Spanish organizations and Institutions got together in a consortium to work together to build an emergency ventilator, to overcome the equipment shortages caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The work is being developed by an alliance between Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona, HP and Leitat, together with CatSalut, Consorci Sanitari de Terrassa and the Hospital Parc Taulí.

In times of crisis, especially when it comes to healthcare and public health, it is very important to stop the spread of false information.

And that is what a company called NewsGuard is trying to do. At NewsGuard, a team of journalists verifies the reliability of news sources so that people can know if the information about Covid-19 shared by news outlets can be trusted.

Eterna is a citizen science initiative in which people are invited to solve puzzles and, in the process, help design molecules with medical applications. Through Eterna ,several functional RNA molecules have been designed, outperforming top existing search algorithms.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the platform has created a design challenged in which players will design mRNA molecules that could be used in a potential vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

The most promising designs will be tested in labs at Northwestern University and Stanford University.

Immutouch is a wearable smartband that vibrates every time the users touch their face, with the aim of keeping people safe during the Covid-19 pandemic and also create safe habits for the future.

The device was created by two brothers, Matthew and Joseph Toles, along with their friend Justin Ith. After college, the three had already built a similar device, meant for people with compulsive disorders, to reduce nail-biting, skin picking or hair pulling.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many grocery shops and supermarkets had to impose restrictions on the number of clients inside the shop. So, long queues where forming outside the shops, of people waiting their turn to go inside. To minimize this situation, a group of Portuguese volunteers with expertise in app development created an app that tracks the queues outside the shops.

Clients and store managers update the app with the information about how long the line is. The data is kept for an hour and then it’s updated with new information.

A group of epidemiologists and software developers at Harvard, Boston Children's Hospital got together with other volunteers and developed Covid Near You - a platform that uses crowdsourced data to map the symptoms of the population.

The objective is to help citizens and public health agencies identify current and potential hotspots of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In India, a group of scientist joined forces to help the country fight the Covid-19 pandemic. The group counts with more than 500 scientists, from the country’s top institutions and internationally, and includes also engineers, doctors, science communicators and journalists.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of infected patients were being hospitalized throughout the world. And they were being treated by healthcare workers wearing full protective gear, including masks, protective shields and hoods. And not being able to see their physician’s faces was not contributing to keep patients relaxed and at ease.

This is exactly what Robertino Rodrigues, a respiratory therapist from the USA, realized: "Yesterday I felt bad for my patients in ER when I would come in the room with my face covered in PPE"

Designer Steve Brooks was concerned about the spread of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and wanted to come up with a device that could allow people to open door without touching the handles.

So he designed the Hygienehook, a portable and personal device that people can carry around with them and use as a tool to open any doors or even touch buttons with it.

The Hygienehook is made from a durable non-porous material that is easy to clean and sterilize.

Physicists from the LHCb collaborations at CERN are developing a stripped-down ventilator, built with cheap and simple components. The device is called High Energy Ventilator (HEV) and it is based on the same type of systems used at CERN to regulate gas flows for particle detectors.

The HEV is being developed in consultation with medical professional and it is meant to be used for patients in recovery or with mild presentations, allowing the high-tech ventilator to be used in patients with more severe symptoms.

Dr Ramy Arnaout, Associate Director of Clinical Microbiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), was aware of the shortage of nasopharyngeal swabs necessary to test patients for Covid-19. So, he put together a team and started coordinating a joint effort to develop a design that could be produced as soon as possible and in large scale. The work is being conducted in partnership with several major institutions, including BIDMC, the University of Southern Florida, the University of Washington, Stanford University and even the United States Army.

Craig Wiles, Head of Design and Technology at Strathallan School, heard that healthcare workers were suffering from pain and blisters cause by wearing face masks for extended periods of time. “I knew there must be something we could do to help.”

So, he designed simple Ear Guards that can be made at home without any specialized equipments or materials. The ideia came after he saw similar designs meant for 3D-printing and he thought that “there must be a simpler and more accessible way to produce these for even those without a 3D printer“.

Liz Klinger and Chloe Alpert knew that healthcare services all over the world where experiencing severe shortage of protective equipment, indispensable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chloe is the CEO of a company which manages hospital’s medical equipment inventory and Liz explained that “My mom is a nurse, and she told me they weren’t being provided masks on her floor, which was obviously kind of concerning. And I was hearing that my mom’s experience was far from the only experience like that — U.S. healthcare workers across the country need masks.”

Sruthi Shankar and Sara Lederman, medical students at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities School of Medicine, knew that a lot of healthcare professionals, working hard to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, where worried about care for their children after schools were closed.

The staff at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital released two books designed to help children understand and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first is a 10-page coloring book for small children, featuring a cartoon coronavirus and simple information tailored for children. The second is an activity book for older children, with more detailed information about the virus as well as some puzzles and activities. The staff are also working on a book designed for adolescents and young adults.

A team at NYU designed a face shield for healthcare workers that can be built in less than a minute. This design was created in response to the severe lack of protective equipment, necessary to face the COVID-19 pandemic, that was being reported by healthcare facilites all over the world.

Unlike most face shield designs available, the design created by NYU doesn’t require 3D-printing. 3D-printing is a somewhat time consuming process and the team wanted to develop a product that could be manufactured extremely quickly, to meet the current needs.