While many spent their months in lockdown binging watching on Netflix and procrastinating on remote work, HHS teacher Doug Scott led a massive project of creating face shields to meet hospitals’ demand for more medical supplies.

COVID-19 caught the United States off guard and unfortunately, hospitals paid the price for the country’s lack of preparation. At the beginning of lockdown, there was an incredibly high demand for medical supplies like face shields but the supply was concerningly low.

Scott began looking at face shield designs and different 3D printed PPE products after Massachusetts General Hospital released a public plea for more medical supplies. And what started off as a small project snowballed into much more.

At first, the shields were being created at a slow pace and the demand was nowhere near met. Eventually, the project was marketed more, a greater number of people got involved, and a working model was set in stone.

Scott expected to be out of the face shield manufacturing business in two weeks. But to everyone’s surprise, the project went on for months from March to August.

In total, 6,000 face shields were produced and sent out to 28 different states.

“It caught on more than we thought it would,” Scott said.

Another incredible achievement of Scott’s team was that they inspired others across the country to follow their model and produce even more masks.

“Because we made it easy for people to participate, they got excited about it and they started doing it,” Scott said.

In recent weeks, Scott’s team has not gotten requests for face shields because larger manufacturers have finally caught up.

“You can buy 10 face shields for like 20 dollars now,” Scott said.