Yesterday, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan announced that the PC gaming manufacturing giant will be dedicating a portion of its manufacturing line to the production of surgical masks to help with the current COVID-19 crisis.

In an effort to help healthcare industries across the world, Razer “intends to donate up to 1 million masks to the health authorities of different countries globally.” To kick this off, it has donated some initial shipments to Singapore, but Tan also says that this conversion of production lines and donation of surgical masks is only the “first step of many that Razer will take”.

While surgical masks are not officially recommended for COVID-19, the WHO does say it is beneficial to use one if you are taking care of someone who has the virus, in combination with other preventative measures such as “frequent hand-cleaning with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water”. These surgical masks that Razer is donating for COVID-19 will presumably be for the use of healthcare staff who are more likely to come in contact with patients that have contracted the novel coronavirus.

It certainly seems like all hands on deck now, and those with production capabilities like Razer are in a pretty good position to help. The PC gaming hardware industry has seen other companies focus their attention towards efforts in slowing or treating the virus, too, with Nvidia, for example, calling on PC gamers to use their rigs in the fight against Covid-19.

So I haven’t had much sleep over the past couple of days to get this initiative up and running, but I’m happy to be able to announce this on behalf of the team here at @Razer

— Min-Liang Tan (@minliangtan) March 19, 2020

With this, Nvidia is referencing the fact that you can lend your gaming PC to help fight Coronavirus with Folding@Home. Folding@Home uses a web of PCs to simulate and model diseases and figure out how to combat them. By lending your PC’s unused resources in this way, you can be a part of the effort to discover how COVID-19’s ‘spike protein’ binds to receptors in the lungs. If this can be discovered and modelled, it can be combated.

As Tan reminds us: “All of us have a part to play and we should be doing whatever we can with the situation getting more serious”. So, if you fancy helping Razer and other gaming hardware companies out in their valiant efforts, you can help, too, by Folding@Home.

Posted: Mar 22, 2020 6:12 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/razer/covid-19-surgical-masks