Erebus Supercars team producing hospital protective equipment

The Melbourne-based team has been working alongside Supercars medical delegate Dr Carl Le to design and make protective equipment to help in the fight against COVID-19.

The team has begun on full-face masks and perspex boxes, which will be used to shield health care workers from infected patients.

The equipment will be distribute to hospitals around the country.

According to team boss Barry Ryan, the idea came from Anton De Pasquale's race engineer Mirko De Rosa, who has family on lockdown in virus-struck Italy.

"It's a challenging time and all Australians need to do all they can to help," said Ryan.

"We are in a fortunate position where we have the ability to make this shift in our operations and help our health care workers and patients.

"One of our engineers has family isolated in Italy, so the effects of this virus have hit close to home for us

"Mirko approached me with the idea of making ventilation masks and in collaboration with Dr Carl Le, we have used our 3D printer to design and further develop ventilation masks for [health care workers] that are based on underwater snorkelling masks.

"Rather than developing something complicated, these cost-effective masks with a 3D printed adaptor and easily replaceable P2 filtration, can be mass produced and go straight away to health care workers on the front line - who are at high risk."

The 'e-Aerosol Box', meanwhile, is currently being trialled by hospitals, with hopes the perspex structure, when connected to a vacuum hose, could protect doctors when intubating patients.

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"One of the riskiest times for a health care worker is when a patient is particularly unwell and needs to be intubated," explained Dr Le.

"Because these workers must be in very close proximity to the patient, this box can provide an additional physical barrier.

''Every emergency department or ICU has wall suction, so we modified the box, which can vacuum potential droplets away from the area.''

A CPAP adapter is also in the prototype phase.