- Hospitals continue to be in short supply of essential equipment needed to protect workers battling COVID-19.
- Movements have sprung up around the country to help "sew down the curve" and make masks for workers on the frontlines of the pandemic.
- Even if you can't sew, there are lots of other things you can do or donate to help hospitals and healthcare workers.
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Following is a transcript of the video.
Matt Stuart: You've probably seen some of these posts calling for help to "sew down the curve." What it means is this: Hospitals are in desperate need of PPE, personal protective equipment, for their doctors, nurses, cleaners, and everybody else on the front lines of this pandemic. These posts are trying to rally people to make those supplies. But can hospitals even use handmade items? And if you can't sew, are there other things you can do to help instead? If you have any of these lying around, you should definitely donate them. It's an N95 respirator mask, and it's needed to protect healthcare workers from the COVID-19 coronavirus. If you've ever painted your house and bought a protective mask, you might have some of these laying around. Construction workers, nail technicians, even people in wildfire zones, you might have these. If you do, your hospital could desperately use them. Now, there is a difference between dust masks and N95 respirators. An N95 mask will block about 95% of all particles bigger than 0.3 microns in diameter, so it offers a lot more protection than just a regular mask. If you're not sure if you have one, check the packaging or the mask itself. If it doesn't say N95 on it, it's likely not rated for protection against the coronavirus, so leave those at home unless you hear your hospital is accepting them. That's not all hospitals need.
Dr. Christina Matulis: The best thing that people can donate is kind of already vetted medical supplies.
Stuart: That's Dr. Christina Matulis. She's a resident emergency physician and has been speaking up about the PPE shortage.
Matulis: So if people happen to have surgical masks at home, N95 masks, gloves, gowns, anything like that that's sort of already approved by the medical community, I think that that's really helpful to donate.
Stuart: So, any spare protective medical supplies you have can be donated. Not just wearable items like goggles, hair caps, and shoe covers, but also unused rubbing alcohol, disinfectant, hand sanitizer, and even thermometers are all very in demand at the moment.
Matulis: On the emergency department, we have to keep both nurses, attending physicians, resident physicians safe, but we also have to keep our translators safe, our secretary safe, even the cleaning staff that are cleaning the rooms safe. And so, as you can imagine, that's just a ton of PPE that we need for each patient encounter. But speaking from my personal experience, I think that ideally we'd have sort of head to toe PPE.
Stuart: Matulis also recommends a website, GetusPPE.org, that's coordinating the distribution of donated PPE. So you if you have any to spare, please do. Now, about those hand-sewn masks.
Matulis: People are starting to use the homemade masks as covers to protect their own surgical masks. So, unfortunately, in a perfect world, we'd wear these masks for each patient encounter and then switch out a new mask.
Stuart: Hospitals are also using the hand-sewn masks for patients to prevent contamination when an infected person coughs or sneezes. However, the CDC does say the fabric masks can be used as a last resort for healthcare workers when N95 masks aren't available or when they're being reused, which is already happening in some hospitals. A few hospitals have even put up their own tutorials on how to make one. If you can sew, you should be able to follow along. If you can't sew, there are lots of tutorials online to show you how. My partner's been making them out of woven cotton, elastic, and cotton thread for the last week or so. We give them to a local group coordinating hospital donations.
Matulis: Hospitals all have their individual policies in terms of what they can use, and I anticipate that that could be changing in kind of the coming weeks or days. I think there may be a growing need for supplies that people are making at home.
Stuart: Some people are even 3D-printing face shields in anticipation of the PPE supply shortage. These are simple to make, with multiple plans already available online, including on the GetusPPE.org website. It's pretty simple. You just download the plans, load it into your printer, and you're good to go. I've been working with one that was developed for the outbreak in Italy. We have a low-end printer we use for prototyping, so it takes about three hours to print the visor then just a few minutes to attach a strip of foam, add a strap, and attach a clear shield. I was cutting up foam and gluing it, but now I'm using the insulation foam you'd put around an air conditioner. The straps are extra elastic my partner had laying around, while the shield itself is just transparency paper you would use to make stencils or overhead-projector sheets. I generally run the printer all day long while I'm working then put them all together when I have a few visors. I cannot stress how easy these are to make. If you have a 3D printer, you can start right now. Massachusetts General Hospital is printing similar shields. They aren't being used in these hospitals at the moment, but they will be there if the supply runs out. Many hospitals are accepting these homemade supplies as emergency backups and last-minute resorts in case their supply of medical-grade ones runs out.
Matulis: Ultimately, anything that anyone donates I think should be donated to a hospital so that they can review the PPE that they are then giving out to their healthcare workers, in terms of ensuring the safety of the materials that are being donated.
Stuart: Matulis had some tips if you are making items to donate. Try to do it in a sterile environment. If you have gloves available, wear them. If you don't have gloves available, wash your hands. Sterile space is really hard to come by in my apartment, so I've been washing my hands before I touch any material I'm working with. And when attaching the Mylar shield, I only put my fingers around where the holes will be punched, so my fingerprints won't be in anyone's field of vision. Even if you aren't making anything, you can still help out.
Matulis: Some hospitals or organizations have started Google Docs where they can kind of offer up different things that they could help with and offer the things that they need. So some people might need, for example, their dogs to be walked or need someone to drop off groceries. Sometimes you can reach out to the hospital and potentially help sort through some of the supplies that are donated. Or providing food for the frontline healthcare workers can be really helpful. Donating books or potentially toys to, like, the pediatric hospitals could be a huge help during this time. Unfortunately, a lot of hospitals have to limit visitors, and so I think having other things that we could provide people could be really helpful.
Stuart: Even phone calls can be helpful.
Matulis: I think it's really helpful for people to reach out to their congressmen or women or their senators to relay their concerns about access to PPE. It's something that really doesn't take much time.
Stuart: Finally, if you wanna help but aren't sure how, check your local city papers and websites. Many are publishing guides on what and where to donate. You can even help if you're feeling sick.
Matulis: And I would urge people, for those that are either anxious about symptoms or feeling that they might be developing a fever, cough, or some other concerning symptoms to really, you know, if they are milder symptoms, to try to opt for telehealth. And that's a way that I think we can check in about our own health symptoms without overwhelming the system.
Stuart: We've added a bunch of links and information in the description of this video, so you can check out all of the resources that I mentioned and help the people on the front lines of this pandemic.
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