Kingston University (KU) have donated stores of personal protective equipment PPE to NHS frontline workers battling the coronavirus.

On Monday (April 6) KU announced it had sourced thousands of items from its labs and workshops including masks, goggles and other PPE gear and sent them to Kingston Hospital for use by NHS staff there.

"Technicians working in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing and in the University's Kingston School of Art responded to the call and have now donated a range of items to both the health centre and the Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

"In total, some 16,600 disposable gloves, 82 regular lab coats, 1,324 safety spectacles, 10 packs of overshoes and 54 disposable face masks were provided to NHS services in the borough, alongside eight specialist Howie lab coats, four disposable overalls, four full face shields and three particulate respirators."

KU said the first batch of PPE arrived at Kingston Hospital "towards" the middle of March with the rest arriving a week later.

They were gratefully received by the staff at Kingston Hospital according to Kingston Hospital's Director of Nursing and Quality Sally Brittain. "It is wonderful to see how challenging times such as these can bring people together," she said.

"We would like to extend our warmest thanks for the generous donations of the safety spectacles and other PPE items we've received from Kingston University for our staff here at Kingston Hospital."

KU's head of technical services in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing, David Utton, described the "determination" with which staff had responded to the calls for PPE donations to help fight Covid-19 coronavirus.

"The coronavirus pandemic is affecting every one of us and we wanted to make sure we were doing our bit to help in whatever way we could," he said.

"Supporting our local NHS services, which are widely used by our students and staff, in this way was an important opportunity for us to give something back to the community at a time when we could make a real difference.

"It's been a huge team effort from all our technicians, who went through all our science and engineering laboratories and store rooms, packaging up everything we had available to donate."

The head of workshops at Kingston School of Art, Richard Trupp, meanwhile reflected on why KU's departments had responded to the call for PPE.

"Our technicians jumped at the chance to help front-line NHS staff. We're all in this together and it's so important every organisation does what it can to back our NHS at this time," he said.

"Because of the nature of what we do at Kingston School of Art, we had a large supply of safety spectacles, which are worn by students at all times in workshops.

"In other areas, such as print making, we had a good stock of disposable gloves, along with masks and other useful safety items we could provide."