Facebook Donates 100K Face Masks to Calif. EMS, Healthcare Workers

With masks, gloves and gowns in scant supply across the nation due to the coronavirus pandemic, Marin County received a donation of more than 100,000 protective masks from Facebook over the weekend.

“Having this donation really helps us ensure that our health care providers and paramedics have the protective gear that’s needed,” said Laine Hendricks, spokeswoman for the Marin County Office of Emergency Services, which accepted the donation.

The donation made on Saturday included 40,000 N-95 masks and 62,000 surgical masks. This was part of a larger gift made to health care workers across the U.S. announced Sunday by Mark Zuckerburg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook.

“Health workers urgently need more protective gear,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “To help, Facebook donated our emergency reserve of 720,000 masks that we had bought in case the wildfires continued. We’re also working on sourcing millions of more to donate.”

Dominican University of California in San Rafael also made a hefty donation to the county and plans to donate more. On Friday, university representatives gave the county 750 N-95 masks. The university plans to deliver this week additional protective supplies, including gloves, hand sanitizer and goggles, from the school’s department of nursing. The science department is also donating 1,000 sterile 15-milliliter tubes needed for COVID-19 testing.

“We’re in this as a community, together, and we have to take care of each other,” Mary Marcy, president of Dominican, said of the donations. “Dominican has been part of the community for 130 years and we will do everything to support our neighbors as they do us.”

On Monday, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced that it donated 1 million N-95 and surgical masks to the state and $1 million to nonprofits across Northern California that are supporting the COVID-19 response. Those supplies are to be administered by the California Office of Emergency Services.

The protective gear donated to Marin will be distributed to health care workers and hospital staff as well as police, firefighters and paramedics on a demand basis, Hendricks said.

The county is working on a way to coordinate other donations of protective gear. However, in order for the equipment to be used, the gear has to be sealed to ensure that there is no contamination, Hendricks said. With that in mind, county officials are encouraging those who want to help to make monetary donations to the COVID-19 Fund set up by the Marin Community Foundation, Hendricks said.

More information is at bit.ly/2UhrnJv.

Thomas Peters, president and CEO of the foundation, said in this state of emergency “we want to do everything we can to help those who are providing essential services.” That includes first responders as well as nonprofits that provide food, housing and other services.

The Central Marin Police Authority put a call out for supplies over the weekend.

Margo Rohrbacher, spokeswoman for the agency, said she received an overwhelming number of emails from community members committing to making donations within minutes of posting the request. Since, the agency has put up a donation bin at its Larkspur headquarters at 250 Doherty Drive, she said.

“The generosity we’re seeing and the sense of community is really terrific,” Rohrbacher said.

She said the agency will be taking inventory of the donations. So far, they know that they will likely redistribute some items, such as face shields, that could be better used elsewhere like at a hospital, Rohrbacher said.

The West Marin Fund launched the COVID-19 Community Response Fund on Saturday to support nonprofits and schools along the coast.

“We are an unincorporated community, but we do have a strong sense of community here in West Marin,” Sarah Hobson, executive director of the nonprofit said.

“However, we suffer from being isolated from the rest of the county,” she said. “We are able to reach vulnerable people along the coast that other organizations are unable to reach.”

More information is at bit.ly/33MDFwn.