By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org

If there is something that staff from West Michigan hospitals have learned during the past couple of weeks, if you ask, the community will rally to help.

As the announcement of the Stay Home, Stay Safe order came out and area hospitals began to see the number of COVID-19 cases rise, hospital officials put out a request for items.

Metro Health – University of Michigan Health Public Relations Manager Jamie Allen said Metro Health has received a number of donations from the community. Among those contributing are:

• Amway donated 3,400 bottles of hand sanitizer

• Steelcase donated 1,800 face shields

• Byrne Electric donated 500 face shields

• The Center for Physical Rehabilitation donated an assortment of gloves, wipes, and sanitizer

• Planet Fitness donated hand sanitizer and disinfectant products

• Posh Nail Spa and Girl Cave Nail Salon donated gloves

• Hoekwater Family Dentistry donated masks and gloves

• Home Depot donated make, filters, and gloves

“We are now asking for homemade cloth masks from the community,” Allen said, adding that they have received about 600 handmade masks from individual donors. “These are something we want to provide to our non-clinical staff members.”

Metro Health – University of Michigan Health is accepting donations from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Items are to be brought to Metro Health’s System Services and Learning Center, 1980 Metro Court, Wyoming. People should enter using the door on the south side of the building, facing M-6. 

Area schools contribute

With public school and college buildings shut down due to the governor’s order, staff at KentISD and several area universities and colleges discovered they had extra personal protection equipment that would not be used for the current school year.

School News Network reported that the Kent Career Tech Center’s Exploring Health Careers program has donated personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves, isolation gowns, and cleaning items like hospital-grade wipes and hand sanitizes to Spectrum Health and the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans. 

According to School News Network, other schools that have donated include Rockford, which donated 5,000 medical gloves and more than 1,000 masks and Grandville High School science department donated 219 pairs of protective eyewear to Metro Health. As well as Grand Rapids Community College, which donated more than 70,000 pieces of medical and personal protection equipment and have had faculty members volunteering time and expertise to Spectrum Health and GRCC’s Nursing Programs loaning thermometers and donated more than 1,500 thermometer probe covers to the Grand Rapid sPolice Department. 

Various departments at Grand Valley State University have donated medical supplies to regional health care systems and facilities. Efforts include donating disposable gloves from science laboratories as well as custom-made masks designed and created by engineering students and faculty, and face shields and respirators donated by occupational safety and health laboratories.

“It seemed like the right thing to do,” said Michele DeWitt, lead lab supervisor with the GVSU Chemistry Department, who led efforts for donating 90,000 disposable gloves to Spectrum Health. “We don’t want the doctors, nurses and other health professionals to get sick. We want them to be able to help us.”

The Padnos College of Engineering and Computing and the applied Medical Device Institute worked to design and create approximately 1,000 face masks, all made by hand from fabric and metal. Because elastic is in short supply, the design incorporates a metal clamp to hold the mask in place comfortably. Those masks will be donated to American Family Care, an urgent care in Grand Rapids that was already in short supply of equipment.

Businesses getting creative

Business leaders have also rolled up their sleeves to help where they can.

Hearing that there was a major shortage of nasal swaps for the COVID-19 test kits at a Grand Rapids hospital, The Right Place staff identities Keystone Solutions Group, a member of its medical device consortium, MiDevice, that had the capabilities to fulfill the request. The company’s team worked to develop the swabs and being production for West Michigan health care systems.

Many have heard of Holland’s Coppercraft Distillery’s efforts to produce hand sanitizer with the company delivering a 1,000 gallons to Holland Hospital before the end of March and another 1,000 gallons to the Detroit Fire Department last week. 

While Coppercraft is focused on area hospitals and other emergency agencies, Three Oaks’ Journeyman Distillery has answered the call of providing hand sanitizer to the community. 

“In the early 1940s, the Warren Featherbone Company supported the war effort by manufacturing raincoats for the U.S. Armed Forces,” said Journeyman founder and self-proclaimed history buff Bill Welter. “Now, almost 80 years later, we’ve converted our production facility in the historic Featherbone factory to make hand sanitizer for front-line healthcare and essential service providers—as well as our community.”

In March, Journeyman had a fundraising bottle sale for its Hourly Employee Fund and from there requests for hand sanitizer started rolling in with the company website taking online orders. 

Due to national restrictions, travel has been down especially on the airlines. Southwest Airlines found it had an abundance of snacks it normally serve for on-board flight service and wanted to make sure food items were put to good use. This week, Southwest Airlines Grand Rapids station dropped of 30 boxes of snacks to teams at Spectrum Health as a way of saying thanks to all the healthcare employees putting in long hours to battle COVID-19.

Donations are being accepted at many facilities. For a list of items, click here.