Central Peninsula Hospital announced earlier in the week that they are welcoming fabric homemade masks from the community, and are now offering commentary about how the effort has helped thus far and how the masks are being utilized at CPH.
Local fabric suppliers are now joining the effort, namely JoAnn Fabrics. In a release, they announced that they have already donated fabric for more than 1.5 million masks via their Make To Give program. On the program’s website, they have instructional guides so that anyone interested in contributing masks has everything needed to help with the effort.
In a release from CPH, there has been an enormous outpouring from the community to help prepare for more cases of COVID-19. While fabric masks are not to be used in the care of COVID-19 patients, according to the CDC, fabric masks are a crisis response option when other supplies become exhausted. Fabric masks are also helpful in other areas of patient care as supplies of Personal Protective Equipment are depleted.
Camille Sorensen of CPH says that there was no existing strain on the system for masks that prompted the request for homemade masks, but that the effort was done to prevent any possible shortages in the future: “Well, we have already started receiving donations of those masks and I wouldn’t say there was a strain that made us put that call out, but it’s more what we anticipate if we see a surge in patients. We don’t want to be caught back on our heels when we could be preparing for the need now, and especially before we put the call out, there were a lot of people reaching out to us offering to make them.”
She added that the masks are used for a multitude of purposes in the hospitals: “There are a couple of uses in that we can use them with other patients in the hosptial that aren’t sick with COVID-19, but to protect them, just in general airspace. So, they will be receiving them after they’re cleaned, of course. We also will be using them with staff, in general spaces and general areas, to wear over other medical-grade masks because they can help extend the life or extend the use of the medical-grade masks.”
CPH does have a process for receiving and sterilizing all donated masks to ensure that any mask that is used is done so in the safest possible manner.