Healthcare Workers Find Allies In Intel And Razer As Coronavirus Threatens Medical Supply Inventory
There is a shortage of medical supplies as healthcare workers around the country (and globe) take up the front lines against COVID-19. It is a challenging situation for sure, and fortunately, companies like Intel and Razer are stepping up to help. Both companies announced individual plans to donate certain supplies to medical workers in this time of need.
Starting with Intel, the Santa Clara chip maker said it plans to source and donate more than 1 million items of personal protective equipment to healthcare workers. This includes masks, gloves, and various other gear.
“We will donate masks, gloves, face shields, and other gear that we have sourced from our factory stock and emergency supplies, and we’ll continue to look for additional sources of personal protective equipment that we can source and donate as quickly as possible to meet our commitment of more than a million items,” said Todd Brady, director of Global Public Affairs for Intel.
It's impressive to see Intel dip into its own factories to scrounge up supplies that, for the moment, are more urgently needed in healthcare settings. And in addition to sending masks and other items to medical workers, Intel announced in January a $1 million donation to the International Red Cross to support global relief efforts for the coronavirus outbreak.
"We are immensely grateful to the healthcare workers who are at the front lines of slowing this pandemic," Brady said.
Meanwhile, gaming peripheral maker Razer plans to donate up to 1 million masks to healthcare authorities around the world. Razer co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan announced on Facebook and Twitter that his company would divert some of its manufacturing lines to cranking out surgical masks.
"While there has been incredible demand for our products during this time with many staying home to avoid the crowds (and to play games), the team at Razer understands that all of us have a part to play in fighting the virus—no matter which industry we come from," Tan said.
Tan also hinted at more action to come, saying the conversion of certain manufacturing lines and donation of surgical masks is "the first step of many that Razer will take."
"We are committed to contributing our extra time, resources, effort, and talent toward the fight against COVID-19," Tan added.
It's not clear what else Razer has in mind, though it's nice to see the company helping out. If you would like to help as well, one thing you can do is donate your spare CPU and GPU cycles to Folding@home, a distributed computing project that is currently busy studying COVID-19 in hopes of finding a cure or possible treatment. The project has seen a massive surge in participation as of late, and is cranking out 470 petaflops of collective compute power, which is more power than the top 7 supercomputers in the world combined.
