We have now sold the last of our stock and do not plan to manufacture any more now that nationally, there are no longer supply issues.
It has been an amazing project and a pleasure to have helped so many sectors during the pandemic with a product designed and manufactured in the UK that is reusable and recyclable. A single CoVisor is equivalent to at least ten disposable face shields, cutting staff PPE requirements significantly and saving money while reducing waste.
Find out what customers think of our CoVisor face shields.
As restaurants, pubs, shops and hair cutters reopened, we saw a rapid increase in demand for CoVisor face shields from the retail, service and hospitality sectors. Our All black CoVisor Midi because the most popular.
22nd June 2020
Today we received our CE certificate for the CoVisor MkII Midi & Maxi face shields for use against COVID-19. They meet the required standard of (EU) 2016/425 tested to EN166:2001.
It took us 11 weeks to standardise our products, get samples through testing by our Notified body SATRA, prepare the technical file and submit it for assessment and issue of the certificate. We are very grateful to the team at SATRA Technology and at SATRA Europe for all their help and hard work in turning things around so quickly and efficiently.
We are now manufacturing ‘ear savers’ that allow the elastic ear loops of a surgical mask to clip to it instead of making the wearers sore. They are injection moulded in polypropylene, making them easy to clean and almost indestructible.
15th May 2020
Since starting six weeks ago, we have distributed over 19,000 items of PPE.
Of those 19,177 items, we have donated 500 gowns, 2,335 visors and 5,600 masks so far.
The breakdown of sectors using our CoVisor face shields is shown here.
(HSC = Health & Social Care).
While we have spent over two thirds of our funding, the budget remaining allows us to continue our work and to make donations where needed.
Our aim is to become sustainable and continue CoVisor in the long term, offering one of the highest quality reusable visors available at a price below many of the disposable ones while still keeping it manufactured in Cornwall. With many PPE projects now winding up due to the requirement to comply with standards, we are currently undergoing CE testing to EN166 Cat. III PPE which will allow us to continue supplying within the UK and also internationally if needed.
24th April 2020
We had approval from Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust today for the latest version of CoVisor face shields with a ‘half hat’ top piece. This approval also covers Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust and so we will be donating a further 710 units that Cornwall NHS Procurement will distribute.
Yesterday we send 170 visors to the Royal Free Hospital ICU in response to an urgent Tweet.
Welcome to the amazing Karen who has joined the CoVisor Team, taking on operations.
Thank you again to Jowan and Alcwyn for all their behind the scenes web & tech help over the last few weeks.
Verity & Kelly with CoVisors while they scan urgent cardiac patients for Treliske in the Community.
It has been a pretty intense first two weeks, especially for Dufort team at the factory. While production is not where we imagined, we have manufactured and distributed over 5,200 CoVisor face shields. From donating to the maternity wing at Treliske to supplying at-cost to undertakers, we have supplied face shields for use at over 70 organisations across Cornwall and the UK. They are being used in Critical care, in ambulances, in minor injuries, by carers, dentists, specialist nurses, in surgeries and by doctors visiting people’s homes.
CoVisor has now been approved by some NHS Trusts for their use and an Ambulance Service Trust has said it is their face shield of choice as it is comfortable and easy to clean for reuse. Our original aim of being reusable is becoming an important feature, allowing relatively small volumes to meet the demand with very little outlay compared to very high volumes needed for single use visors.
Thank you Francis Dufort, the main man behind it all. Thank you Shawn Brown, Louis, Alex, Elliot, Jack, Colin, Kim and everyone else at the factory. Thank you Linden at Design2Create, Gavin & Martin, City Sprint (and Kev), Phil Penna, Rosa, Chris, Esme & girls. Thank you Helpful Engineering Team, Jayne Kirkham, Katherine Lewis, Kingdom & Sparrow, Eleanor and everyone else that has given so much time.
Thank you to all of you who have donated to our Crowdfunder, it would not have been possible without you.
Also over the last two weeks we have been able to donate 500 disposable gowns and nearly 4,000 disposable face masks to healthcare settings in Cornwall including Treliske, St. Austell hospital, Newquay Hospital, Falmouth Hospital, all the Helston surgeries, Cornwall’s out of hours GP service and many more surgeries.
There have been quite a few challenges – managing production with a compressor failing and then a CNC machine breaking and a replacement being setup in parallel to the product development and new tooling to implement feedback from users and little improvements to CoVisor version 1.2 which is now super flexible, making assembly even easier for users.
We are currently working on securing new clear screen material supplies that we can purchase by the tonne and also working towards CE marking for CoVisor to meet BSEN166 as Cat. II PPE. Achieving this will allow us to continue providing CoVisor face shields in the short term, as well as long term if a need remains domestically or internationally.
A slight distraction from face shields, but Friday morning was upsetting and rewarding in equal measure. We distributed 3,500 masks that we were able to donate thanks to your support. Volunteer Cornwall’s ‘Cornwall PPE’ project managed the allocations and delivery split between Phil Penna and Cornwall 4×4 team.
It was so rewarding being able to provide supplies to NHS staff in need, the day they need it, but it also brought home the question of how was I here, loading boxes of masks I had ordered a month ago from China into the back of Land Rover to deliver to St Austell Hospital, Newquay Hospital, Falmouth Hospital along with GPs surgeries around the county? A big thank you to Carrie, the agent I deal with in China and UPS for actually getting it Falmouth. Sorry to Esme for the stress I caused sticking several thousand pounds on my credit card in early March without any idea how I was going to pay it off.
Also on Good Friday we successfully received our pallet of 750m of clear material for face shield screens and got 500 CoVisors delivered to Chris McIntyre in Newcastle upon Tyne to help their #PPE4NE project of donating PPE. We were able to provide them better face shields, faster and cheaper than they could make them themselves. It was great to see photos of it being received by NHS staff there the next day.
For me, the weekend has been non-stop phone calls and 14 hour days in front of screens, working with Jowan to get an ordering system up and running, with Alcwyn to move and rebuild our website, processing orders and annoying Shawn while he works on building relationships with more injection moulding companies to increase production and Francis who has been on a mission designing the next CoVisor version.
Thank you mostly to everyone on the production team who have kept the machines running for 3 out of the 4 days of Easter.
Please get in touch if your healthcare organisation needs face shields supplying just email
We are four days in and have fulfilled orders for over 2,200 CoVisors.
Today it is thank you to Chaz, the transport genius who has managed to get a pallet of materials collected in Newcastle and will have it here at 0630 in the morning (Good Friday).
Thank you to Dylan at Longshores for donating machining time to make our next injection moulding tool, that will hopefully allow us to more than double our production towards the end of next week.
