Donations welcome

“Our goal is to help those who are helping us,” said Joel Cannon, president of the New Mexico State University chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS).

SPS, which includes nearly 30 physics, engineering and other discipline majors, are making COVID-19 boxes and other personal protective equipment (PPE) that will be donated to hospitals in Las Cruces and elsewhere to project healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

The students are also using 3D printers to make face shields for healthcare workers, and are making protective masks, Cannon said. The group has reached out to Memorial Medical Center and MountainView Regional Medical Center in Las Cruces and to hospitals across the state to gauge their interest and needs. They are asking for donations from the community through a Go Fund Me account to help pay for materials to build the boxes.

“The COVIDBox is an acrylic box that can be placed over a patient who has developed COVID-19 to allow medical care workers to safely manipulate patients (intubate, check vitals, take samples, etc...) through two arm openings,” Cannon said on the project’s Go Fund Me page. “This can help prevent medical care workers from contracting the virus. The box will be the first line of defense to keep the virus contained if the patient coughs, sneezes or otherwise releases the virus.”

Healthcare workers are “real-live superheroes and they deserve our support,” said Cannon, a Las Cruces native and Oñate High School graduate who will graduate from NMSU next month and wants to work in the defense industry or for the federal government.

Cannon said fellow SPS-NMSU member Juan Treto adapted the COVID Box being produced in Las Cruces from an open-source idea and is “the mastermind” behind the project. Treto is president of the Society for Engineering and Physics National, which is partnering with SPS on the project.

Another SPS member, Alejandro Solis, has been the main engineer, “producing the protypes and running all the structural and chemical tests,” Cannon said.

Cannon said students completed a protype of the box April 10 and are continuing to conduct tests to make sure it can stand up to hospital cleaning products like bleach, ammonia and isopropyl alcohol.

They are also doing structural-integrity tests, he said, “to make sure when we do donate these to the hospitals, they don’t have to worry about being affected by cleaning agents or about breaking them.”

So far, Cannon said, the test results have been positive, and so has the response from the medical community. Some hospitals are already using protective boxes and have found them “really effective.”

He said students are building the boxes at their respective homes in Las Cruces as they maintain social distance from one other.

Cannon encouraged hospitals, doctors and nurses to get in touch with him about their PPE needs.

To make the boxes, students are buying sheets of acrylic from local home improvement stores at a cost of $150 each. With the $1,000 they have collected in donations so far, they will be able to purchase eight sheets of acrylic, which Cannon said will make 24 boxes.

“I estimate we can produce those 24 boxes in the next couple of weeks, depending on how much manpower we get,” he said. If they get enough donations, they can upgrade to polycarbonate to make additional boxes, he said. And if they can collect $5,000 or more in donations, an online company will pre-cut the sheets.

“Our challenge lies in the cost of the acrylic, and we have exhausted our funds to purchase the materials required for further production,” Cannon said on the Go Fund Me page.

He said donations to the COVIDBox project are welcome in any amount. It likely will cost about $50 to produce a single box, Cannon said, but that could change as more donations are received. He said all project spending will be fully documented.

For more information, contact Cannon at 575-640-2996 and jcannon@nmsu.edu. To donate, visit www.gofundme.com and enter the name COVIDBox Medical Response.