On Mar. 24, 2020, 3M and Ford Motor Co. announced that they had entered into a partnership in an effort to increase the production of 3M’s PAPRs (powered air-purifying respirators) in response to the shortages caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

The two companies planned to collaborate on specific means to rapidly combine each others’ capabilities and resources to meet the latest surge in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The previous week week, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York was one of several healthcare facilities that reported shortages in protective equipment like masks and respirators. Earlier this month, reports claimed that some U.S. hospitals were facing short supplies of N95 respirator masks from 3M. The company said in a news release on March 2 that its plant in Aberdeen, S.D., is running around the clock producing the masks.

Maplewood, Minn.-based 3M’s PAPRs are designed with a waist-mounted, battery-powered blower that sends filtered air into a hood to give the user respiratory protection for an extended period of time.

3M said it has doubled its global output of the N95 masks, producing the equipment at a rate of more than 1.1 billion respirators per year, or nearly 100 million per month. That number is up to 35 million per month in the U.S., with more than 90% designated for healthcare workers.