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Gujarat’s Corona innovations | India Today Insight

Three innovations the state hopes will help it combat COVID-19

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Gujarat’s Corona innovations
Bamboo product expert Pravin Singh Solanki has developed a convertible social distancing hat which can expand and shrink at the push of a button.

Since few know the nature of the beast that is COVID-19, individuals as well as private companies in Gujarat have come up with unique innovations to combat the coronavirus crisis. Here are three of them.

1. Reusable PPE kit

The personal protection equipment or PPE kits currently in use last for only about a week. Vadodara-based Sure Safety, a company that is into industrial safety gear manufacturing, has built one that can last for two years, or even more. Relying on the PASS or Positive Air Supply System, used in developed countries in areas of high levels of infection such as ICUs or isolation wards, it can provide essential protection in a disease as contagious as COVID-19.

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Christened Saviour by Sure Safety, the PPE kit consists of a reusable de-contaminable positive pressure suit which can be connected to an air source that allows breathing as well as ventilation. The air can be sourced from a compressor in the vicinity of the ICU and supplied through hoses connected to the oxygen pipelines in hospital ICUs/ wards.

The suit can be used continuously, after which the user can remove it in a special decontamination chamber and step out. After 15 minutes in the decontamination chamber, the suit can be ready for use again.

A new modern PPE kit developed by Vadodara-based Sure Safety.

2. Social distancing hat

Bamboo product expert and faculty at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Pravin Singh Solanki has developed a convertible social distancing hat which can expand and shrink at the push of a button. Push the button, and its brim extends by a metre, automatically putting distance between you and others. Reach home, press the button again and the hat returns to its normal size. And its name? A very brilliant Tan-Doori, which, loosely translated, is body distance.

Solanki, whose innovations with bamboo know no limits and have been exhibited at several exhibitions abroad, has also developed a makeshift bamboo bed for corona patients. It can be used as a bed for a corona patient, and once he recovers, it can be put to use as a stretcher or even a bier. At a time when the number of Covid cases is rising and hospitals are running out of beds, Solanki’s multi-purpose bed can be a veritable boon.

A bamboo bed for Covid patients developed by Pravin Singh Solanki.

3. UV sterilisation chamber

Ahmedabad-based firm Ecosukrutum has developed a freezer with ultraviolet rays which he claims can kill all kinds of virus, bacteria, fungi and moulds. Place any vegetable or grocery or even your mobile inside and it gets disinfected in 40 seconds. Says Ecosukrutum CMD Vishal Singh: “At a time when there is a fear of superspreaders in the form of vegetable vendors and grocery shop owners, the invention has really helped build the confidence of the people.” Since Rs 34,000 might be steep for families, Singh has made a smaller version called UVC 30, priced at Rs 7,000.

Ahmedabad-based firm Ecosukrutum has developed a freezer with ultraviolet rays which can kill all kinds of virus, bacteria, fungi and moulds.

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