Cardiff based Life Sciences Hub Wales is working with businesses from a range of industries, including manufacturing, food and drink, IT and healthcare to explore how they can scale up production, repurpose existing products and deploy their expertise and capabilities to deal with the crisis. Read more here
Contact: Beverley Watson
Pendik Municipality has started to produce its own masks to be used by its personnel. Thousands of masks have been produced within a day.
The masks will be used by its personnel and visitors of municipality buildings. Read more (in Turkish) here.
Contact: Oğuz Karakaya
53 employees of Wien Energie, Vienna´s public energy company, are temporarily relocated to power station sites to ensure that people have access to light, heating and hot water during the corona crisis. The colleagues volunteered to live separated from their families at one of the isolation stations at the waste incineration plants Spittelau, Flötzersteig and Simmeringer Haide, as well as at the Simmering power station. Their tasks range from controlling the facilities to maintenance work and minor repairs. Read more here
Contact: Michaela Kauer
People who need to travel to work during the confinement in the metropolitan area of Nice Côte d’Azur can use public transport for free. The Metropolitan Office also adopted urgent measures to support small local companies, including advance payments for public contracts and aid to cover the monthly rent. The French Government and Parliament are asked to reduce, or authorize local authorities to exempt economic players from the corporate property tax. The decision were taken in a video meeting of the Office. Read more here (in French)
Contact: Jérôme Sieurin
To ensure that basic public services are functioning even in the crisis, Lille Metropole has initiated its Business Continuity Plan. Services in the areas of mobility, water, energy, waste collection, youth grants, housing grants and public support to companies are handled by 500 agents, out of a total of 3,000 employees, from 18 departments. Since 17 March, after a total lockdown in France was announced, they are working in three teams, with 200 agents permanently on the ground and two standby teams. The plan had been drafted after the swine flu pandemic in 2009. Updates are made available online twice a week (in French).
Contact: Christophe Bolot
The central kitchen of Nice has been mobilized since the start of confinement to feed those in need, including the children of health and essential service personnel. Currently, up to 2,000 meals are prepared every day by 60 municipal officers (compared to 102 usually) divided into three brigades. Hygiene standards, which are already strict in normal times in the kitchen, have been reinforced in the context of this exceptional situation to ensure the personnel present the guarantees necessary for their safety. Read more (in French) here.
Contact: Jérôme Sieurin
While fighting the COVID-19 crisis, ensuring the basic continuity and survival of public transport and local mobility services is essential for Europe and all European citizens. This includes the many professionals that depend on a well-functioning local transportation network to meet their daily needs. Read more here
In Odemira (Portugal) reside a significant number of foreign agricultural workers who often live in close quarters. The area hasn’t had many cases of COVID-19 yet, but the municipality believes it’s just a matter of time. This is why mayor José Alberto Guerreiro has prepared a prevention plan for quarantine that takes into account the need to prevent transmission within this population. This includes making several spaces with sanitation services and possibilities to organise meals – like sports and multipurpose pavilions – available to accommodate up to 500 migrants working in agriculture. Read more (in Portuguese) here
The Murcia City Council has reorganised how it collects waste, with new measures including double bagging, reorganising workers’ shifts, and calling on people to pay attention to what the experts say and to produce as little waste as possible. Read more here
Contact: Mercedes Hernández
