Central Arkansas women are taking the national face-mask shortage into their own hands.
The Let’s Sew Face Masks Facebook page was created by two Faulkner County women to recruit volunteers to make fabric face masks to donate to health care providers and others.
The group “exploded from there,” said Jenny Wallace of Greenbrier, a former public-school teacher who set up the page.
Co-founder Nancy Allen of Conway said that although these are not the N95-quality masks, they are BTN — “better than nothing.”
“I had a nurse say in a Facebook post that she had been advised just to bring a bandana to work,” Allen said.
As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps through the population, it is pushing resources to the brink — especially personal protection equipment. The fabric masks can be used when none are available or to cover the N95 masks and prolong their use, Allen said.
More than 4,000 hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities in Arkansas and as far as Wisconsin have contacted the Let’s Make Face Masks group, requesting help. The group will focus on Arkansas facilities first, said Tabitha Wirges, the Facebook page administrator.
In Arkansas, requests for masks have come from a variety of places, such as the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital and CareLink in Little Rock and The Ministry Center and Bethlehem House in Conway, as well as nursing homes, behavioral hospitals and pharmacies.
Wallace, who home-schooled her four children before schools were ordered to close, spearheaded the effort after an online conversation with Allen. The two have never met in person.
Wallace set up the Facebook page one night last week. When she woke up the next morning, the Facebook group had 150 members. At press time, the membership was almost 800.
Only about 40 to 50 people are sewing the masks, Wallace said.
At Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s press conference Thursday, Dr. Cam Patterson, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences chancellor, announced that Arkansas has purchased more personal protective equipment, including 4 million surgical masks and 3 million N95 masks, which were scheduled to arrive this weekend.
The women say that won’t be enough if the wave continues, nor will every health care provider get one.
“This is a last resort, but I’m afraid this is where we’re coming in the next two or three weeks,” Wallace said.
Lynn Bell Thompson of Conway, who owns a real estate company, saw the request on Facebook and offered her sewing skills.
“I really can’t show property right now,” she said.
She didn’t own a sewing machine, so she bought one just for this project. She’s made and delivered 145 fabric masks, including 30 for CareLink in Faulkner County and 30 for Perryville Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Allen doesn’t sew, but she calls herself “a harasser” and will make deliveries and find people to take the masks to the post office.
Wallace and Thompson said the masks are easy to sew — but elastic is scarce. A plea has been sent out for anyone who has elastic to spare. Thompson said she’s been cutting up ponytail holders, which work well.
“It took me longer to thread the machine than make the masks,” she said. Thompson said she is using the pattern that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided online.
Wallace said she researched many patterns, and the two the group suggests can be found on the Let’s Sew Face Masks Facebook page. One is the Deaconess pattern, which was posted by a health system in Illinois that early on made a plea to the public for masks because supplies were exhausted. Most of the masks made have a pocket to insert a filter of some sort, Wallace said.
CareLink CEO Luke Mattingly of Little Rock said the 600-employee company “put out a call” a a couple of weeks ago for masks.
CareLink’s services include nonskilled home health care and Meals on Wheels in several counties, including Faulkner County.
“You just can’t get masks; we’ve searched,” he said. “When the cloth-mask concept became available, we decided that was something we would do to at least add an extra layer of protection for the employee. Sometimes patients we are going to see don’t have masks.”
Mattingly said the agency received “a tremendous response” to the request, and Let’s Make Face Masks provided 30 masks.
“Thirty was a drop in a bucket, and we certainly appreciate it,” he said.
He said CareLink purchased some of the fabric for the masks.
“Elastic is now a commodity that you can’t find,” he said, echoing Thompson.
“Our employees have received them. We are using them out in the field and still need more because we anticipate the shortage to continue,” Mattingly said. “We’re trying to give a mask to every employee in the field and to drivers. Of course, those aren’t going to last forever. Ideally, they’d be replaced every day,” but that won’t be the case, he said.
The state’s new supplies will go to hospitals and nursing homes first, Mattingly said, “and then trickle down to us. We’re certainly going to be in line knocking on the door.”
Wallace delivered 20-plus face masks to Spring Hunter, executive director of the Conway Ministry Center, which provides food and other services for those in need.
“We have volunteers who are still packaging food and distributing it to people’s cars,” Hunter said. Also, some clients are shut-ins, have compromised immune systems or don’t have transportation.
The masks “are for my staff and volunteers who are directly interacting with people to make sure they have food to eat,” she said. “I think the cool thing about having the fabric masks is I plan to hand-wash them and reuse them,” she said.
Thompson is also making disposable masks out of shop towels, requested by Dr. Caroline Miles, who works at the John McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital.
Thompson said she and Miles have communicated.
“She said, ‘We need disposable. We won’t use them for surgery, just for protection,’” Thompson said.
In a Facebook post, Miles lamented the “woefully inadequate” personal protection equipment available.
Miles is involved in a second Facebook group, Common Thread Central Arkansas, that was formed March 22. That group has a goal of 6,500 masks by April 6 to donate to the John L. McClellan Veterans Hospital and other health care workers.
Thompson and Miles were interviewed on a television news station to talk about the sewing project and to try to get more volunteers.
“We just want people sewing,” Wallace said.
One of the problems, Wallace said, is that the official stance of some hospitals may differ from what nurses and employees tell her is happening. The hospitals are trying to stay within CDC guidelines and “are covering themselves and their liability,” she said. However, Wallace said the CDC has loosened its requirements because of COVID-19. Homemade face masks are permitted “as a last resort,” according to CDC.org.
“[Some] people aren’t volunteering to sew because they say [hospitals are] not using them anyway, so that’s frustrating,” Wallace said.
An official statement from Conway Regional Medical Center said although it is grateful for the support of heath care workers, “we are not advising the use of cloth masks at Conway Regional. Medical-grade masks are our best defense against infection, and we have protocols in place to prolong our supply.”
CDC guidelines for “crisis-capacity strategies” provide for “limited reuse of face masks.”
The statement also says that Conway Regional employees will be provided personal protection equipment.
“While we are not in need of cloth masks, we are thankful that our community is ready and willing to do whatever they can in times of need,” the emailed statement said.
Nate Smith, Arkansas secretary of health, said last week in a news conference that his wife and daughter are sewing fabric masks, mainly for non-health care workers. He also said there is the possibility of using the fabric masks over the N95 masks to protect the masks from droplets that contain the virus, allowing the N95 masks to be reused.
Thompson said the Let’s Sew Face Masks supplies have been given to some immune-compromised individuals, too.
“If you can’t sew and you can’t buy them, what can you do? It’s really sad that people are doing without protection, not just the front-line workers, but everyone. The people checking you out at the grocery store need one. If you’re not staying home, you need a mask, I think.’
In addition to donations of fabric and elastic, “mainly, we need to get sewing,” Wallace said.
Wallace has enlisted her husband, Cameron, and their four children, ages 10 to 16, to help make masks.
The Let’s Sew Face Masks Facebook page has a place for requests, questions and announcements.
Wallace also teaches Chinese students online.
“I sort of saw this [COVID-19] unfold,” she said.
“We researched so many patterns. Several were by Chinese women. … It was such a reminder of — we are one. They have gone before us, and now they’re helping us, showing us how to do this. They sewed for their nurses and doctors and are teaching us how to sew for our nurses and doctors,” Wallace said.
“That is such a chilling thing to me. Everybody is fighting the same thing right now,” she said. “We’re all in this together.
“Our job is to stay home, and my job is to sew.”