esigners, engineers and programmers have heard the klaxon call. The last few weeks have seen a wave of ingenuity unleashed, with both garden-shed tinkerers and high-tech manufacturers scrambling to develop things that will combat the spread of Covid-19. Many of their innovations raise as many questions as they answer, though. Could 3D printing now finally come into its own, with access to open-source, downloadable designs for medical parts? If so, will intellectual property infringements be waived, or will altruistic hacktivists still face costly lawsuits? Could mobile phone tracking map the spread of infection like never before, keeping people away from virus hotspots? If so, might governments use the pandemic as an excuse to ramp up surveillance measures post-crisis? From 3D-printed respirator valves to UV-sanitising robots, here are 10 inventions that the battle against coronavirus has spawned so far. Anti-virus snood Biochemists at Manchester University have developed a snood with “germ trap” technology. The result of a 10-year project with biotech firm Virustatic, the snood has now been hurried into production. Its creators say the fabric coating has a similar formation to the carbohydrate structures on the surfaces of the cells that cover the oesophagus. They created the technology by attaching glycoproteins to carbon cloth, then to other cheaper materials such as cotton. Their tests have shown that it traps 96% of airborne viruses. According to inventor Paul Hope, the snood is more breathable and flexible than a conventional mask, meaning patients can also wear them. “The biggest spreader of viruses, the people you are treating, can’t wear existing masks,” he says, “because of issues with breathability. If they could, that would reduce the virus within the hospital environment. Our snood mask moulds to your face, and it’s all the way round, not just your nose and mouth. It fits everyone.” The company hopes to make as many as a million a week, reserving a portion for the NHS. Fever-finding smart helmet Our Robocop future just got one alarming step closer thanks to Chinese tech firm Kuang-Chi Technologies. The Shenzhen-based company has developed a smart helmet that can detect people with a fever up to five metres away, sounding an alarm when anyone with a high temperature comes close. The headset, which is already used by police in Shenzhen, Chengdu and Shanghai, features an infrared temperature detector, an augmented-reality visor, a camera that can read QR codes, plus wifi, Bluetooth and 5G so it can beam data to the nearest hospital. Equipped with facial recognition technology, the helmet can also display the subject’s name on the AR visor, as well as their medical history. According to the developer, it would only take officers two minutes to scan a queue of more than 100 people with the help of the helmets, while one big hospital would only need 10 such helmets to cover every corner of its site. Reassuring in a pandemic, perhaps, but a terrifying prospect the rest of the time. 3D-printed ventilator valves An Italian company came to the rescue after a hospital ran out of crucial valves for its ventilators. The hospital in Chiari, in the Brescia area of northern Italy hit hard by the virus, had 250 coronavirus patients in intensive care, and was short of venturi valves – which connect the ventilator to a patient’s face mask, and need to be replaced for each patient. After the original supplier was unable to provide new valves quickly enough, the hospital put out a call for help. Isinnova contacted the manufacturer, Intersurgical, but was unable to obtain a digital model of the part, so its team decided to reverse-engineer its structure themselves. The first prototype was ready within six hours, with 100 working valves printed and supplied to the hospital within a day. Isinnova CEO Cristian Fracassi told the BBC : “The valve has very thin holes and tubes, smaller than 0.8m – it’s not easy to print the pieces … Plus you have to respect not [contaminating] the product – really it should be produced in a clinical way.” His team has since developed a 3D-printed adapter to turn a snorkelling mask into a non-invasive ventilator for coronavirus patients, to help to address the possible shortage of oxygen masks. South Korea has been leading the way in testing its citizens for Covid-19, with nearly 20,000 people tested every day, more people per capita than anywhere else in the world. As well as pioneering drive-through centres, where people with symptoms can check their health status, one hospital in Seoul has introduced new testing booths that allow medical staff to examine patients from behind the safety of a plastic panel. The phone box-like cubicles use negative air pressure to prevent harmful particles from escaping outside. Each patient steps into the booth for a rapid consultation via an intercom, while samples can be safely taken by swabbing their nose and throat using arm-length rubber gloves built into the panel. The whole process takes about seven minutes and the booth is then disinfected and ventilated. “We used to collect samples inside a large negative-pressure room,” says Kim Sang-il, president of the H Plus Yang hospital where the booths are in use. “It took a long time to disinfect the place. We used to take eight to nine samples per day, but we can now take 70 to 80.” Tired of pulling your sleeve over your hand to touch the door handle? Belgian 3D printing company Materialise has designed a hands-free door handle attachment. Under the slogan “Do less harm, use your arm!”, the design, which has been made available to download for free, consists of two simple parts that can be screwed either side of a handle, allowing you to use your arm or elbow to turn the handle. “Door handles are said to be among the most contagious places in a building,” says the company’s CEO, Fried Vancraen. “We call upon everyone who has access to a 3D printer to print the part and make it available to their local community.” Looking like a cluster of lightsabers on wheels, a sterilising robot has been developed by a Danish company. It can kill virus cells and sanitise hospital wards without the need for chemicals. The eight bulbs on each roaming robot emit concentrated UV-C ultraviolet light, which destroys bacteria, viruses and other harmful microbes by damaging their DNA and RNA, so they can’t multiply. This could reduce dependency on chemical-based disinfectants such as hydrogen peroxide, which require rooms to be left empty for several hours during sterilisation, making them impractical for many parts of hospitals. The robot was launched in early 2019, following six years of collaboration between parent firm, Blue Ocean Robotics and Odense University Hospital, but recent demand has seen production accelerate, so it now takes less than a day to make one robot. A similar device has been developed by Chinese firm YouiBot, which took its existing robot base and added thermal camera and UV-C bulbs. It has supplied factories, offices and an airport, and a hospital in Wuhan. “It’s running right now in the luggage hall,” says YouiBot’s Keyman Guan, “checking body temperature in the day, and it goes virus killing during the night.” Chinese company Winsun has deployed its rapid 3D-printing powers on an architectural scale, manufacturing 15 coronavirus isolation wards in a single day. The little concrete cabins were originally designed to be used as holiday homes, but the company ramped up production to cope with demand from overcrowded Chinese hospitals at the height of the epidemic. The buildings, which have showers and eco-toilets, were printed through an extrusion process, with a robotic arm mounted on rails, gradually depositing layers of concrete to build the walls. The company says it uses recycled construction rubble in the process and claims its structures are twice as strong as a conventional concrete construction.