Protection Collections Abound For Local Health Care Workers
March 30, 2020
Campus units donate masks, gloves, other much-needed supplies
By Dan Novak M.Jour. ’20 | Maryland Today
A global pandemic was heading toward Maryland, and university officials started preparing for the worst by buying up tens of thousands of protective masks to protect the campus community.
This wasn’t last month, but in the late 2000s, when avian influenza threatened the nation. Now staff in the Division of Administration and Finance has uncovered the stockpile in a storage facility and is donating 12,000 N95 respirators and 12,000 surgical masks on hand to the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) for health care workers fighting to save those infected by COVID-19.
It’s just one example of units across the University of Maryland collecting donating supplies to local health care providers facing looming equipment shortages as the outbreak expands.
“When something big like this is going on, everybody is figuring out what they can do to help,” said Reuven Goren, coordinator of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s Scene Shop, where he uses protective gear like masks and gloves to build sets and props.
It was Goren’s idea to give the shop’s six boxes of N95 masks, and some 40 boxes of protective gloves to a hospital in need. They are now at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda.
Read more in Maryland Today.