Santa Cruz County To Release 27,000 Masks

Press release from the Santa Cruz County Government:

March 24 2020

To help protect the health and welfare of local health care workers, the County of Santa Cruz is releasing nearly all of its recently acquired stockpile of 27,000 N95 masks to local critical health care facilities.Five percent of the stockpile will be reserved for unanticipated future critical needs.

The masks will be distributed to local hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, federally qualified health care clinics and urgent care facilities, emergency medical services responders and in-custody medical providers. The stockpile includes 10,000 N95 masks recently donated by Facebook Inc.

The County also is asking medical facilities to optimize use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in accordance with guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, available athttps://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy. The distribution of masks will be done according to highest medical priority. Due to global scarcities from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and hoarding by individuals with no ongoing medical needs,PPE including gowns and coveralls, goggles and face shields and respiratory masks are in extremely short supply.

While the County stockpile is now depleted, the State and federal government are mobilizing additional supplies. Over the last week, the State began receiving shipments form the national PPE stockpile, and has requested an additional 20 million N95 masks, 10 million surgical masks, 600,000 surgical gowns,600,000 face shields, 600,000 gloves, 300,000 goggles and 100,000 coveralls.

In addition, the County is in the process of establishing a drop-off site for local institutions and individuals to donate surplus PPE. A site, hours and list of acceptable items will be published this week.

For local information on COVID-19, go to www.santacruzhealth.org/coronavirus, call 211 or text“COVID19” to 211211. Residents may also call (831) 454-4242 between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.,Monday-Friday.

This press release was produced by the Santa Cruz County Government. The views expressed here are the author’s own.