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<\/p>\nThe Covid Alliance has been nominated at the 2020 Engineers Ireland Engineering Excellence Awards. Earlier this year, Mercury team members took part in this fantastic initiative comprising over 50 project partners from the Irish engineering and manufacturing sectors.<\/p>\n
Established in March 2020 in response to the looming Covid-19 crisis, the Covid Alliance came together to volunteer their services to the Health Service Executive (HSE). This informal grouping of organisations who provided services primarily on a pro bono basis was organised into a series of volunteer work streams, all of which were focused on meeting the needs of the crisis. With each project partner aligned to a work stream based on their specific capabilities, the Alliance\u2019s expertise was central to the development of a number of healthcare supports and initiatives.<\/p>\n
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This included a review of medical gas infrastructure in more than 30 of the country\u2019s acute hospitals, and subsequent capacity delivery projects, such as servicing the Citywest stepdown facility with medical gas infrastructure and upgrades to five hospitals to increase or ease pressure on oxygen supplies and medical air systems.<\/p>\n With a diverse project team, the Alliance has also enabled the servicing of temporary clinical facilities, including the design of temporary reception wards for county hospitals. The Alliance was also central to the scaling up of the reagent supply chain to address shortages that were impacting national testing capabilities, commercialisation support of a rapid home-testing system and the design of locally produced goggles for medical personnel, for which an order for over a million units is in process with the HSE.<\/p>\n Voting runs until midnight on Friday, 11 December 2020.<\/p>\n![\"Mercury's](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1-e1590581937391-1000x581.png\")