The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have affected companies worldwide, including lucrative tech giants like Apple. Almost all corporate employees at the firm have switched to working from home. Resultantly, the company has faced several product delays. Considering this, it has taken multiple mitigatory measures that can help the company and the public at large in this time of crisis.
Continuing these efforts, Apple CEO Tim Cook has delivered an update on another step that the company is taking to aid the fight against the pandemic. Cook announced that Apple has sourced more than 20 million masks via its supply chain and is working with governments to donate them where needed.
Apple is dedicated to supporting the worldwide response to COVID-19. We’ve now sourced over 20M masks through our supply chain. Our design, engineering, operations and packaging teams are also working with suppliers to design, produce and ship face shields for medical workers. pic.twitter.com/3xRqNgMThX
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 5, 2020
Similarly, in collaboration with design, engineering, operations, and packaging teams, Apple is also manufacturing face shields for medical workers. One such shield is shown in the tweet above. For it, materials and manufacturing were sourced in the United States and China. Cook says that these shields assemble in less than two minutes and are fully adjustable, and come packaged within a box. And each box encapsulates one hundred masks.
The first shipment was delivered to the Kaiser hospital facilities in the Santa Clara Valley, last week. Cook claimed that the feedback coming from the doctors there was "very positive". Moving forward, Apple has shipped one million pieces in the past week and aims to ship one million pieces each week in the subsequent weeks. Currently, distribution is limited to the United States for now, but the Cupertino firm plans on expanding elsewhere in the future as well.