Apple Pledges To Design And Ship 1 Million Face Shields Each Week

World-famous for phones and computers, Apple has shifted production to designing its own face shields for health workers and is now making the safety gear to be supplied to hospitals globally.

Apple CEO Tim Cook in a video on Twitter said the company has sourced and donated over 20 million masks through its supply chain and plans to ship 1 million of them a week to protect the medical professionals fighting the coronavirus outbreak around the world.

The tech giant said the shields will be shipped first to US medical workers and then they will be distributed globally.

“We plan to ship over 1m by the end of this week and over 1m per week after that,” the Apple chief said. “We are closely co-ordinating with medical professionals and government officials across the US to get these to where they’re needed most urgently. We hope to quickly expand distribution beyond the US in both these efforts.”

Apple is dedicated to supporting the worldwide response to COVID-19. We’ve now sourced over 20M masks through our supply chain. Our design, engineering, operations and packaging teams are also working with suppliers to design, produce and ship face shields for medical workers. pic.twitter.com/3xRqNgMThX

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 5, 2020

The shield is a simple sheet of plastic that requires less than two minutes of assembly before it can be worn to cover the face.