The Oregon Chinese American community is donating 12,000 face masks to aid Clackamas County health centers and first responders in the local Covid-19 response.
The donation comes from more than 10 local Chinese-American organizations, including the Chinese Friendship Association of Portland, the Intel Chinese Employees Network and the United Chinese Association of Oregon, and hundreds of individuals, according to a news release from the county.
A spokesman for the county tells the Canby Now Podcast that the group is donating 10,000 masks to county health centers — which provide low-cost, quality medical, dental and behavioral health services to the community — while a thousand are going to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office and another thousand will be delivered to Clackamas Fire District No. 1.
The donation includes a mix of N95 masks, disposable face masks, surgical masks and face shields. The personal protective equipment was scheduled to be dropped off at the Clackamas County Central Utilities Plant Wednesday morning, with Commissioner Martha Schrader — along with representatives from Clackamas County Health Centers, CCSO and Clackamas Fire on hand to receive them.
China was the site of the first known outbreak of the novel coronavirus, and the country — and more specifically, the central city of Wuhan — is widely believed to be where it originated. According to the FBI and other sources, Asian Americans have increasingly been the victims of hate crimes and discrimination as the Covid-19 crisis has intensified in the United States and across the globe.
Stock photo of disposable procedure masks by Nurse Together. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).
