Two months into the COVID-19 outbreak in our region, health-care workers’ need for PPE (personal protective equipment) remains great. The Seattle Mask Brigade – a volunteer effort – asked us to remind you how you can help with what they’re doing = “collecting donated masks from around the greater Seattle area and delivering them to hospitals and nursing homes that are running out”:

Most donations are just a few masks (less than 20) that people have lying around in their emergency kit, but they all add up! So far we have coordinated deliveries of over 25,000 donated masks to hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, shelters, food banks, and more. We usually distribute masks within a day of receiving them.

Our small group has helped folks in over a dozen cities around the country launch their own mask brigades, from Los Angeles to New York to Louisville.

Our website is seattlemaskbrigade.org. There’s a form on our website where people can sign up to donate N95 masks, surgical masks, homemade cloth masks, and nitrile gloves (we will accept opened/unsealed boxes of masks). Our volunteers pick them up from donors’ porches within a day or two. We also have a form where health-care workers can request masks.

The need for masks is critical. Even with PPE arriving from the government, we are still receiving urgent requests and we need more donations to be able fulfill them. In the past week donations have been decreasing, but requests for masks have not. Recently we’ve received a lot of requests for homemade cloth masks that can be reused.

Questions? Email seattlemaskbrigade@gmail.com