On Thursday, 26 March 2020, secpho, a cluster organisation in the field of photonics and optics, organised a webinar focusing on the different solutions that photonic and other Deep Tech technologies can offer to face the global challenge of COVID-19. Sergio Sáez, cluster manager of secpho, made a brief introduction of the session, in which half of the 90 participants were partners of the cluster...

Clusaga, the Galician Food Clusters ( Cluster Alimentario de Galicia) in collaboration with the Xunta de Galicia and other clusters and associations, has participated in two grouped purchases of personal protection equipment, facilitating the supply of a total of 125,900 masks to companies and freelancers based in the sector and in the Galician community. This guarantees the protection of workers...

The president of the cluster MetaIndustry4 has published a very interesting article related to life beyond the Coronacrisis. He underlines the importance of clusters and early preparation to get out of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic that might be interesting for all clusters in Europe: "Intermediate organisations, such as clusters or local development agencies, will have an even more...

In the face of the Coronacrisis, an innovative project that uses repurposed shipping containers to create plug-in Intensive-Care Units (ICU) with biocontainment through negative pressure was just launched. It goes by the name CURA (Connected Units for Respiratory Aliments) and is an open-source design for emergency COVID-19 hospitals. The first model of CURA has been built and installed at a...

The Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Agency (BSMEPA) has published a new portal on its website, through which representatives of Bulgarian business can be informed about available public financial support instruments, government measures for staff retention and compensation of employees, as well as important normative documents related to the state of emergency in the country. A...

The Health Ministry of Spain has recently published the following official guideline to desinfect and reuse of hygenic masks: Wash and disinfect the masks with normal detergent and warm water with temperature between 60º-90º (normal washing machine cycle). Soak the masks in a bleach dilluted with warm water with the proportion of 1:50 for 30 minutes. Then wash with soap and water and rinse well to...

As a response to multiple research group requests and thanks to the authorisation of data owners, EisphorIA has deployed its Natural Language Processing (NLP) solution. This allows researchers to access thousands of COVID-19 related scientific papers, assisted by artificial intelligence. The service helps researchers to gain insights into the Coronavirus, identify trends and understand quickly...

Elettra - Sincrotrone Trieste, an Italian research centre, aims to actively contribute to COVID-19 research, giving special priority to experiments related to SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins and studies of possible drugs for viral infection treatment. Researchers from all over the world have the possibility to benefit from remote access to Elettra/FERMI beamlines and perform experiments on a priority...

The COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) is a joint effort of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a forum that includes the United Nations and other international organisations and NGOs with a humanitarian mandate, to analyse and respond to the direct public health crisis and the indirect humanitarian consequences of the pandemic, particularly for people living in countries...

An inspiring example of how companies from the Stockholm region retool operations to assist in the fight against the coronavirus is the story of A23 Lab AB. Until a few weeks ago, the clinical laboratory A23 Lab based at the Biomedical Center in Uppsala, only conducted testing for prostate cancer using a proprietary test. Now, it’s redirecting its efforts towards COVID-19 sampling as an official...