In response to mounting concern that frontline medical workers don’t have the protection needed to treat people who are infected with the COVID-19 virus, Direct Relief delivered 11 pallets of N95 face masks to Cottage Health this morning. Translated that’s 194,000 masks.
Direct Relief’s Tony Morain explained that Santa Barbara County received a shipment of 1 million masks last Saturday. This is the county’s portion of the 20 million masks secured by the State of California in response to the crisis of supplies. Beyond that, Morain stated, Direct Relief is expecting a planeload of additional masks delivered from China this coming Saturday. That delivery, would involve 80,000 new masks. Shortly thereafter, Morain said, Direct Relief is expecting an additional delivery of 50,000 masks, and sometime after that, a million. Morain added that major manufacturing companies like Gap and Haynes — famous for T-shirts and underwear — have jumped into the mask-making business with a vengeance.
Direct Relief has been involved in the worldwide effort to contain and mitigate the virus since it hit China late last year, Morain noted. It distributed 800,000 masks in China , but since the United States has emerged as the epicenter of COVID-19 infection, the international disaster relief nonprofit has shifted its focus to the United States. “We’re getting calls from every single state, from major hospitals and small clinics, from doctors, from doctor’s spouses, from nurses, and from mothers of nurses,” he said. “This is unlike anything we’ve dealt with before.” Morain said Direct Relief had 500,000 masks in inventory at one point, but now it’s dwindled to 10,000.