The LA New Product Development Team in Shreveport is using their talents to create a way to help those frontline warriors face the pandemic.

Parkway Pharmacy, nestled off of Highway 165 in Sterlington, provides all your pharmaceutical and compounding needs. However, with the rapid spread of COVID-19 the pharmacy took on a new challenge.

One Cenla business owner we spoke with says he’s been pleasantly surprised at just how smooth the process is. “I mean it took us 15 minutes to apply for the loan and we did that on Sunday and on Tuesday we had approval, so it went really fast.”

Sanctuary Arts School and Glass Studio, in Shreveport, is leading a statewide initiative to donate emergency-use equipment to hospital workers and first responders caring for coronavirus COVID-19 patients.

While Maxey was in the lab working, Brewer was a guest on KALB’s Good Day Cenla. There he shared a few details about the project. Within an hour, Brewer received notice that a church wanted to donate $500 to the project. And before 24 hours had passed, more than $5,500 had been donated to help defray expenses and help buy another 3D printer.

Shreveport-based LA New Product Development Team, a product design, development, and marketing company, are relocating their 3D printers to assist with the COVID-19 crisis.

The company will be shifting their 3D printers to start producing the face shields, which can be used in a medial setting. The company says they already have orders for states like Arizona, Arkansas, California, New York, Texas, and Washington, but will be producing and donating masks here in Louisiana first.

Higher education institutions throughout New Orleans have put forth Herculean effort, school officials said, making, locating and donating thousands of pieces of personal protection equipment, pitching in volunteer hours and tapping into expertise to try and protect nurses and doctors and fight the pandemic’s deadly spread.

Ph.D. student Anthony Mai and his advisor, LSU Chemistry Chair John Pojman, are ensuring the quality of over 5,000 gallons of hand rub sanitizer. Last week, the first two batches were placed into 5,300 bottles and distributed all over the state. Mai worked in the chemical industry before entering LSU’s graduate program and is familiar with working with such large-scale amounts of liquid chemicals.