Amazon.com Inc is mass-producing face shields for healthcare workers using engineering tools and expertise borrowed from its drone unit, the latest retooling of the retailer’s resources to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The company says it will sell the face shields on its website at cost, at a price to be announced, starting "in the next few weeks”. Amazon has already given some 10,000 units of its newly designed face shields to healthcare organisations and plans to donate an additional 20,000, Brad Porter, a vice president with the company’s robotics group said in a blog post on May 14. Porter said he expects to list the reusable shields at a significantly lower price than models currently available. Business Insider reported last week that Amazon had reassigned some drone staff to work on face shields.

The products are being built at Amazon’s drone engineering facilities in Washington state - using, at one location, a machine that normally cuts carbon fibre for drone parts to slice screens for the face shields - as well as by contract manufacturers elsewhere. An Amazon spokeswoman didn't say how many the company expected to produce.

The design built on work by a 3D printing hobbyist group in Washington that was working on face shields when an Amazon employee and member of the group connected with colleagues and offered the company’s aid. Roughly 500 Amazon people contributed to the project, the company said. The designs, which Amazon is giving away for free, have been approved by the US National Institutes of Health.

 - Bloomberg