Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s hospitals have joined five regional Mayo Clinic hospitals in asking the public to donate home-made fabric face masks for use during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s hospitals will give the masks to staff working in areas other than patient care, and to patients for use when they move around the hospital. Masks will also be given to patients to take with them when they are discharged, according to press release on Friday from the two hospitals.
A slightly earlier Mayo press release requested community donations of fabric masks for use by patients, visitors and staff in the system’s five Chippewa Valley hospitals. A follow-up story in the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram reported that some 6,000 masks had already been donated and that receiving 750 masks per week would enable the hospitals to keep up with the demand for them.
Locations where masks can be dropped off for any of the hospitals – and drop-off times for the Mayo Clinic hospitals in Barron, Bloomer, Eau Claire, Menomonie and Osseo – can be found here.
All seven of the hospitals expressed gratitude for the community’s donations of masks since the start of the pandemic.
Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s hospitals noted that their current inventory of fabric masks is good but that more are needed because “the requirement for masking will continue within our hospitals, as per the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines, for the foreseeable future.” Hospital personnel working in direct patient care will continue to wear personal protective equipment (PPE), they said.
The Mayo Clinic press release instructed mask-makers to follow guidelines from professional organizations such as the CDC. These include using a tight-weave, 100% woven cotton fabric and avoiding synthetic or polyester fabrics.