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Local company creates face shields for area hospitals after being deemed an essential business

A lack of personal protective equipment has been a top concern surrounding the coronavirus. A local business is creating face shields to help area hospitals.

PERRYSBURG, Ohio — Magna Visual is a company in Perrysburg that's been deemed essential by the state of Ohio. Although operations remain, they've also started to create face shields to help the hospitals in our area.

"Certainly we're not on the front lines, but we're right behind them trying to support them," said National Sales Manager, Zach Stechschulte.

He said he got the idea to create face shields after seeing a company in Detroit, with similar production tools, change some operations to create personal protective equipment.

"We have a four-foot by eight-foot flatbed cutter. That machine, right now, we are actually running 24 hours a day. So we have a couple of employees that have graciously decided to stay and work throughout the night," said Stechschulte.

In a 24-hour time period, he said they are able to create 1,200 plastic face shields.

Knowing this, he reached out to local hospitals to see if it was something they could use and how many they would need.

"We knew that it was a serious situation but when they asked us how many we could get them each day, that's really when it struck home for us that there was really a need here locally to be able to provide these PPE products," said Stechschulte.

On the first day of deliveries, he said they delivered 100 face shields on the first day and are planning to make deliveries of a few hundred everyday now that production is speeding up.

"It feels really good to be able to help. There's so many times where you see situations and you're not able to do anything," said Stechschulte.

With all the materials they have right now, they will be able to make approximately 11,000 face shields. They're working to secure more materials since the need is growing.

RELATED: Ohio issues order requiring hospitals that don't perform coronavirus testing to send tests to hospitals that do, not private labs

RELATED: University of Findlay donates boxes of PPE to local hospitals

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