The tailors came together through workshops supervised by a local social initiative called Sa'ed, or Help, intending to help the medical staff in Damascus through making affordable and competitive medical masks and overalls amid the high prices of the imported equipment.
A total of four workshops cooperate with Sa'ed to make the masks and overalls and every workshop benefits around 16 families of the tailors who work with them.
Despite that the tailors don't make as much money as they used to before the coronavirus crisis, for them, it's better than doing nothing at all.
Tareq al-Tawil, a tailor, told Xinhua that he was encouraged to work on making medical overalls after his original work was suspended during the virus crisis.
"When the coronavirus crisis began, our jobs stopped and later we got the opportunity to work from home, so we started making overalls to help ourselves first because lots of businesses have stopped and I have obligations and family to feed," he said.
For her side, Bushra Iriqsousi, a woman running a tailoring workshop, told Xinhua that her workshop used to make cotton outfits before working in making masks and overalls.
She said that a group of tailors was quickly trained to make masks to meet the needs of people.
The tailors in Iriqsousi's workshop were working feverishly to produce more masks, which are being sold to hospitals and medical teams at cheap prices.
IssamHabbal, head of the Sa'ed group, said that the initiative has succeeded in terms of being non-profitable as it targets the buyers directly without mediators.
He said the tailors have succeeded as they have decided to sell their products to hospitals, medical associations, and individuals in a bid to provide these types of equipment at relatively cheaper prices.
He said the new initiative has offered job opportunities for many tailors.
Such initiatives are helping during these times as the Syrian health ministry said on Friday that 38 COVID-19 cases had so far been reported in the country. It also said that five have recovered and two died.