Virus

Dr. Shelly Miller's website(https://shellym80304.com/) has papers, tools, and webinars on SARS-CoV-2 infection control, tools to select air filters for the size of a room, and links to guides on and reviews of air filters.

COVID Scholar is a natural language powered search tool that can be used to search the following databases.

• COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, Provided by Semantic Scholar, Wang, Lucy Lu et al. “CORD-19: The Covid-19 Open Research Dataset.” (2020).
• Elsevier Novel Coronavirus Information Center, Provided by Elsevier, Elsevier’s free health and medical research on the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and COVID-19.
• LitCovid, Provided by National Center for Biotechnology Information, NLM/NCBI BioNLP Research Group Zhiyong Lu, PhD Qingyu Chen, PhD Alexis Allot, PhD

JPL has released four open source respirator designs that can be used as Person Protection Equipment (PPE). The designs have not been tested or cleared by the FDA to prevent COVID-19. They caution to use the designs at your own risk.

A scientific consortium has created the N95DECON website to post data on N95 filtering facepiece respirator decontamination. This includes protocols for UV-C and Hydrogen Peroxide Vapor (HPV) decontamination.

Salman Faris from the OSHWA has posted a lists of the current COVID-19 Ventilator Projects, Resources, and FAQ on GitHub. Each project is evaluated on a point scale to indicate the readiness of the project. The repository contains:

• Resources about ventilators
• Videos
• A list of the most buildable projects
• A list of the almost buildable projects
• A list of not yet buildable projects

The presentation for the Arduino Combating COVID-19 Conference have been posted to their website. The conference talks included the following topics:

• Plenary Introductory Session
  • David Cuartielles: The Arduino Community Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak
  • Robert Read: Open Source Hardware for the Emergency
• Session 1: Arduino-Based Ventilators and Medical Devices
  • Room 1: Arduino based Ventilators
  • Room 2: Other Arduino-Compatible Medical Devices
• Session 2: Legal and Technological Challenges
  • Room 1: Legal and Certification Challenges
  • Room 2: Technology and Manufacturing Challenges

Researchers have posted the perspective paper COVID-19: A Call for Physical Scientists and Engineers in the ACS Nano journal in an effort to engage engineers and physical scientist to develop engineering solutions that prevents the transmission and spread of the future virus outbreaks. The paper is free to read.

The Stanford COVID-19 and AI: A Virtual Conference is available on line. The talks were very good. The AI talks begin at around 4:55.

The high demand and shortage of surgical and N95 mask has lead many group to improvise and build their own. It's not clear who will be accepting DIY shields and masks since the mask and shields haven't been qualified. The links below are a random sample of the active projects.

Boston Children's Hospital

• COVID-19: Our response to the N95 shortage

NY Times

• What’s the Best Material for a Mask?

Christina Cyr at tdoor.com provides info on 3D printing shields

• Face Shield Update

Adafruit Shield design

• Visor 3-Hole Design
• PPE order instructions

Washington Post

• Which DIY mask pattern should you use? Even experts can’t pick one to recommend

3D Verkstan

• 3D-printed protective visor

Cornell Weill Medicine

• Studio V
• 3D printed face shield

Wikipedia

• Respirator

Linus Tech Tips

• 3D Printing 300 Face Shields… PER DAY

c&en

• Why the best material for a homemade coronavirus face mask is hard to identify

ACS

• Aerosol Filtration Efficiency of Common Fabrics Used in Respiratory Cloth Masks
• Corrections

Actuated Medical

• Face Shields

The NJEDA has announced some new initiatives to support small business due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The initiatives include:

• Small Business Emergency Assistance Grant Program
• Small Business Emergency Assistance Loan Program
• Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) Emergency Loan Loss Reserve Fund
• CDFI Emergency Assistance Grant Program
• NJ Entrepreneur Support Program
• Small Business Emergency Assistance Guarantee Program
• Emergency Technical Assistance Program

For more information see: COVID-19/Novel Coronavirus Information for New Jersey Businesses

Unacast has created an interactive Social Distancing Score Board using data from the Johns Hopkins Git repository. It shows the reduction in travel by state and county. Our state received a score of A, but we seem to have had a spike of infections.

In their blog, Public use of masks to control the coronavirus pandemic researchers at the University of Bath hypothesize that public uses of masks may help control the coronavirus pandemic. The idea is that masks help reduce the spread of the virus by reducing the amount of droplets expelled and inhaled. The blog notes that surgical and N95 masks appear to be effective. Non-medical masks appear to be effective as well according to the blog. The research found that the effectiveness of improvised masks are unknown because of flawed study controls.



In another older study, A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers found that infection rates for healthcare workers using cloth masks were higher, than the infection rates for worker using medical masks. The study concluded that cloth masks are not suitable for healthcare workers.

Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a distributed computing project for simulating protein dynamics, including the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins implicated in a variety of diseases. Folding@home is working to start simulations of the COVID-19 protein. The simulations are run on a volunteer network of distributed computers. Volunteers install an app on their computer and the simulation runs when the users computer is idle. To support the effort, download, install the program, and configure it to allocate computer resources as desired. The app is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Linus Tech Tips has a video Here's How YOU Can Help Find a Cure for COVID-19! that shows them setting up a machine to run the Folding@home.


By Jftrempe (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Caltech has posted an interview with virologist David Ho on the COVID-19 outbreak. David Ho is an expert on viral outbreaks and the HIV/AID virus. The article provides may insights and a long term perspective on COVID-19.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) has placed open-source Merlin on GitHub. It is being used to run large scale machine learning workflow simulations for drug discovery and AI simulations on COVID-19. Maestro is another tool to help define and automate multi-step workflows.

Get the latest updates on COVID-19 from the New Jersey COVID-19 Information Hub

Helpful Engineering is a volunteer organization, with engineers, scientists and doctors around the world dedicated to helping the world address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Visualcapitalist.com has posted an article on The History of Pandemics showing the scale of different pandemics through out history. The illustrations are fabulous.

A number of groups are working on open ventilators and other hardware projects to contribute to the shortages of medical supplies, equipment, and Personal Protection Equipment due to the coronavirus COVID-19. I heard an estimate today on the news that 3 billion masks will be needed in the US, for example. The scale of the impact of the coronavirus is hard to fathom. A short list of projects are shown below.

Open Projects

• From Design to Mass 3D printing of Medical Shields in Three Days
• Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS)
• Coronavirus Makers
• A.I.RE. forum
• Arduino-controlled respirator
• 7 open hardware projects working to solve COVID-19
• Ultimate Medical Hackathon: How Fast Can We Design And Deploy An Open Source Ventilator?
• COVID-19 forecast data on GitHub
• MIT Ventilator project from 2010

Request for Information

• Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC) Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) Request for Information (RFI) – CoV Pandemic Response

The Coronavirus (COVID-19): Small Business Guidance & Loan Resources webpage provides the following information:

• Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program
• Guidance for Businesses and Employers
• SBA Products and Resources
• Government Contracting
• Local Assistance

The NJSBDC webpages has some information about the NJSBDC Network, Coronavirus & Your Business. The information provided includes:

• Statewide network status
• Economic disaster relief
• Employee resources
• COVID-19 Health & Safety Information
• Additional Resources

COVID-19 & Freelance Artists website has posted and extensive list of resources to help freelance artists and artists communities that have lost projects, venues, and events due to COVID-19.

Johns Hopkins has setup a Coronavirus resource center that provides information about the coronavirus. The resource center provides an interactive map that tracks coronavirus infections around the world.

The Coronavirus Tech Handbook is a effort by the open hardware community how to provide support and hardware for the coronavirus outbreak. This include ideas for Open Source Ventilators and Oxygen Concentrators, working remotely, caring for children, fighting misinformation, and tools for schools and scientist to name a few.

The ACS has posted the Chemistry in Coronavirus Research: A Free-to-Read Collection from the American Chemical Society virtual journal. Presently, the virtual journal contains a dozen or so articles.