MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley got a welcome delivery Friday afternoon, as Rep. Harley Rouda showed up with thousands of gloves, hundreds of face shields, 20 respirators and other equipment needed for healthcare workers and patients battling the coronavirus pandemic.
All of the items were donated in response to a March 27 call from Rouda, a Democrat from Laguna Beach who represents the 48th District in coastal Orange County. Rouda said he’s been contacted hourly by healthcare workers and first responders with “desperate pleas” for protective gear, so he asked individuals and companies to donate or manufacture equipment to combat looming shortages.
“Our healthcare workers did not sign up to treat patients without proper personal protective equipment,” said Rouda, who wore a face mask and gloves as he unloaded boxes out front of the hospital. “We are sending them into battle with a deadly disease without any armor.”
Along with his individual donation drive, Rouda partnered with Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Yorba Linda, to lead the entire Orange County congressional delegation in sending a letter Friday to the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services urging them to use all available resources to get supplies to the front lines of the coronavirus crisis. The letter mentions the Defense Production Act, which allows the federal government to compel companies to make supplies needed during national emergencies.
“As Congress has already passed three bipartisan coronavirus response bills, the federal government needs to step up and deliver these critical resources urgently,” Cisneros said. “There is no time to waste.”
Rep. Lou Correa, a Democrat from Santa Ana, also put out a call last week for some of the roughly 3,300 manufacturing companies in his 46th District to start making masks, gowns and other medical gear that’s in short supply.
Correa’s spokesman Andrew Scibetta said Friday that they have a growing list of 22 businesses who are either already making protective equipment or are retooling their factories to make such products now, from Medtronic making ventilators to Network Brewery making sanitizer products to AST Sportswear making face masks.
Scibetta said they’re hoping companies that shift gears to help medical workers will also be better able to weather the economic crisis, with his office connecting them with business loans that don’t have to be paid back if they keep paying employees.
One of the companies that answered Rouda’s call was Dendreon Pharmaceuticals, a Seal Beach-based company that focuses on immunotherapy treatments for men suffering from prostate cancer. Dendreon Pharmaceuticals donated 400 face shields, 400 shoe covers, 50 coveralls and nine bottles of bleach.
The company keeps a wide variety of protective gear on hand so they can manufacture medicine without contamination, spokeswoman Leslie Bryant said. So they dug into their stash, balancing what they can donate with what they need to keep on hand so their crew of 100 workers can continue getting medicine to patients.
“We all kind of have an obligation to support the healthcare workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 fight right now,” Bryant said.
Donations also came in from Mimi Fong, a neckwear designer who sells handmade ties, scarves and wraps from her Laguna Beach boutique. Fong started using supplies at her company to sew face masks by hand. Rouda’s crew picked up two dozen masks already, with more in the works.
Right now, healthcare workers at MemorialCare have the gear they need to protect themselves and others as they care for patients with the coronavirus, according to hospital spokeswoman Debra Culver. But Culver said the donations from Rouda will help ensure they have enough supplies going forward, with public health officials predicting the number of local coronavirus patients to surge over the next several weeks.
