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04/08/2020 08:30 AMAcross the country, hospitals and health care workers have been forced to work with limited or inadequate protection equipment as they lead the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. To help, Dr. Urania Magriples, M.D., a longtime Guilford resident and associate professor at Yale specializing in high-risk pregnancies, has been distributing unique, home-made cloth masks to her staff, the manufacture of which has been taken on by the community.
The motivation for her efforts is simple.
“We weren’t given masks in the outpatient area, and last week we were given masks to wear for a whole week. But only certain people got the masks,” she says, “which is kind of demoralizing to the staff.”
As part of the effort to fill that gap, Urania used the design of simple cloth masks she brought back with her from Rwanda, where she has worked regularly teaching OB/GYN doctors through that country’s Ministry of Health. Then, that straightforward design was modified to include a removable filter cut from specialty vacuum bags, adding to the protection they provide.
Urania, who works at Yale New Haven Hospital, got in touch with a retired former nursing manager, Nancy Busch, who now lives in Trumbull, and fellow Yale doctor Josh Copel and his wife, Alix, who live in Madison, to put together this unique substitute. While not nearly as effective as a proper, certified medical mask, these masks have helped protect hundreds of dozens of health care workers and boosted morale at the hospital, according to Urania.
“It’s the idea that we’re all in this together, and we’ve got each other’s backs,” Urania says. “I don’t want my staff to get sick, I’m working every day...We have to stay healthy so we can all do this.”
Busch, who worked with Urania for many years at Yale, has taken the lead on the sewing, and so far has put together about 150 masks.
“Who ever dreamt we would be making masks as protective gear?” Busch asks.
Busch says when Urania first reached out to her, she did some Internet research and found the design for the vacuum bag model, which have some advantages and are relatively simple to make.
Because they are working hard to maintain social distancing, Busch says she doesn’t really even see Urania in person, with Urania dropping off the cloth or unmodified masks on Busch’s doorstep, and then picking up bags of filtered masks when they are finished to distribute at the hospital.
Urania and Copel both emphasized that from a medical standpoint, even these jury-rigged filtered masks are no real substitute for the N95 surgical masks.
“It’s not ideal...but when the CDC says we should wear bandanas, I was like, ‘My masks are better than a bandana—I’m going to make them better,’” Urania says.
The specialty filter material, which is cut from HEPA vacuum bags that filter much finer particles, have been donated by both friends of the couple, as well as other community members.
After the word got out about the initiative through social media and news reports, Copel says people began dropping off these bags on his doorstep.
“Our address is, for better or for worse, out there,” he says. “Every couple of days, we open our front door and find a bag of vacuum clean bags. Some of them had come from people we know, and some we would just find...and have no idea where they came from.”
It is likely that hospitals like Yale will continue to depend on these less-than-idea mask substitutes, according to Copel, as the pandemic worsens and supply chains continue to lag behind demand.
But at this point, both Copel and Busch say they have plenty of supplies to keep making their masks—though even simple things like elastic bands and dish towels are beginning to become scarce, according to Busch.
“...I had a lot of the supplies here. And before it got too hard, we got some things over the Internet,” Bush says. “But right now, you try to buy elastic...there’s a significant delay to get it because I think this is happening probably...all over the country.”
Yale has put out a design on its website for a homemade mask people can make and donate, though it’s not the filtered ones Busch has been making. Busch says many other hospitals around the country have done the same, asking for donations and disseminating patterns for masks.
Other local businesses and residents have begun putting their sewing talents to work making cloth masks of various descriptions, including Angie Lu Tailor’s in Madison, where owner Lina Demasi says she has essentially been working full time making about 70 cloth masks a day that go both to hospitals as well as nursing homes and first responders.
Dozens and dozens of people all around the shoreline have reached out to offer to donate supplies or help, according to Demasi.
“The community is amazing, everybody is amazing—the support I have from everyone,” Demasi says.
Urania says one thing people can do is to use these cloth masks themselves when they’re just going to the grocery store or other essential errands, and donate any N95 masks to hospitals, where they are really needed.
One of the positives at the hospital from these masks is helping boost the morale of overstressed hospital workers. Urania described the patterns and colors of the masks, based on a traditional East African wax print fabric design called kitenge renowned for its bright colors and distinctive patterns, as “gorgeous,” and says her staff have definitely felt the love and care of community members and friends through these creations.
“I change my mask up—I have a purple one today, one day I’ll have a green one, one day I’ll look like a rasta. My residents in Rwanda laugh, because it’s like jewelry for me when I’m in Rwanda...We’re not wearing any jewelry to work, but [we] still have the masks,” Urania says.