These small town Kentucky volunteers are sewing masks for their local hospital
While volunteers and large companies were working to bolster dwindling supplies of medical masks and respirators across the country and the world, one small Kentucky group was doing its best to sew homemade masks for their local hospital.
In Harrison County — the site of the state’s first confirmed coronavirus case — a group of, thus far, 40 volunteers were trying to sew through a request of 1,000 face masks to be donated to Harrison Memorial Hospital.
“Around here, almost everybody has either a family member that works there or a friend that works there or a friend’s family member that works there,” said Janell Delaney, who started the group and whose daughter works at the hospital. “Everybody knows everybody in some way or another.”
Last weekend, Delaney said she reached out to one of Harrison Memorial Hospital’s administrators whom she knew to see if there was interest. By Wednesday she had a request for 1,000 masks and started a Facebook group, HMH Mask Makers, to keep track of the friends who had volunteered to help her. On Friday, the group had grown to 40 members and Delaney estimated the group had made about 300 masks.
Harrison Memorial Hospital officials “appreciates the efforts of the group” and are currently “seeking guidance from the Kentucky Department of Public Health and Centers for Disease Control on how to best utilize the sewn masks,” Mollie Smith, the hospital’s director of physician recruitment, wrote in a statement.
Delaney said she’d been told that medical employees wouldn’t wear the masks but that the hospital could use the masks for patients that enter the hospital with something that is “easily transmissible.” Then the hospital staff could conserve their supply of personal protective equipment.
“That’s my understanding,” Delaney said. “I hope to God that our medical people are not reduced to using homemade masks.”
The masks are a simple construction of fabric with a pocket in the front so a filter can be inserted if needed, Delaney said.
Making a mask takes about 25 minutes, a 7-inch rectangle of fabric, a pipe cleaner, two elastic strips and the “normal sewing things,” Delaney said.
The experience has made Delaney proud of the volunteers. They had plenty of reasons not to participate like recent unemployment, kids at home or cancer treatment, Delaney said.
“The examples of incredibly indomitable spirit just go on and on. It seems like everyone in the group has a very legitimate obstacle that would otherwise prevent them from getting involved,” Delaney said..
Delaney said she’s also proud of her community and its leaders—citing work done by the county’s judge-executive, Cynthiana’s mayor and the governor since the first confirmed COVID-19 case.
“Things like this are possible only because of the leadership that you have,” Delaney said. “...Nobody ever thinks that a little place like Harrison County is going to be the first.”
This story was originally published March 28, 2020 at 11:40 AM.