Red Hook’s RETI delivers masks

There has been a major shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Red Hook’s RETI Center has been doing all it can to contribute. 

RETI, which stands for Resilience, Education, Training and Innovation, has created an initiative called Rapid Resilience, which has drawn hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, in an effort to deliver much-needed masks and other vital medical supplies to women and men treating infected New Yorkers.

Tim Gilman-Sevcik is the executive director. His goal has been to get FDA-certified N95 masks into the hands of doctors, small hospitals, clinics and others who would not get support through government channels. The organization has reached out to nonprofits and midwives providing direct support to vulnerable populations. 

RETI has taken advantage of contacts in overseas manufacturing and has tasked RecycleGo, led by CEO Stan Chen, to head the supply chain of PPE. Rapid Resilience found a way to get masks from China in three to five days instead of the usual two weeks – and for $3 a mask instead of $7, the price announced by Governor Cuomo.

Once supplies reach their destination, volunteers like Alex Dumitrescu

pick them up and distribute them.

According to Dumitrescu, preparation began in earnest on March 23. From that day forward, the Rapid Resilience team made sure they had everything lined up to access the right amount of PPE and could transfer funds in the right ways. 

Dumitrescu emphasized the importance of finding “somebody that could help us do customs, because that has been a huge difficulty.” Deliveries started on April 3.

Rapid Resilience’s MaskForce campaign has delivered PPE to 20 hard-hit healthcare centers in the New York City area. 2,150 masks have gone to Brooklyn Methodist; 1,000 to Coney Island Hospital; 800 to Elmhurst Hospital; 800 to Wyckoff Hospital; 700 to Woodhull Hospital; 400 to Brookdale Hospital; and 400 to Jamaica Hospital.

Farther afield, Rapid Resilience’s Project PPE NM campaign has delivered 200 face shields to Chinle’s Comprehensive Healthcare Facility in New Mexico.

Public hospitals have been starved of PPE much more than private hospitals, which have the necessary resources and the right supply-chain infrastructure in place to secure them.

MaskForce has PPE arriving on a weekly basis and delivers it as it becomes available. As of an April 23 update, the team had secured about 92,000 pieces of protective equipment for frontline healthcare professionals.

A lot of the work was led by Emily Bauer, who collaborated with different organizations to avert a competitive landscape of multiple, uncoordinated charitable endeavors.

“The RETI Center’s mission in general has been to be there in time of disaster,” Dumitrescu said. “The idea is to continue this initiative and continue expanding in ways that will ensure medical professionals have what they need.”

In addition to the large public hospitals, Rapid Resilience has been dealing with some small hospitals and has coordinated with medical staffing agencies that bring people from outside of New York City to help. 

“The idea of MaskForce is to provide a scalable decentralized model that other organizations can replicate, not just here in New York,” Dumitrescu said. “I know that we have worked with people that are trying to deliver to Boston, Miami and San Diego as well.” 

The need for PPE has started to slow down, but the problem has not yet been resolved. Rapid Resilience’s strategy has been to communicate with the medical professionals and assess how long each recurring delivery should last based on their evaluations.

“When we deliver the necessary PPE, none of the doctors said that this is not enough or that it will not make an impact,” Dumitrescu said. “It is more, ‘This is going to be huge, this definitely buys us time, but we may require more.’ If that is the case, we work with them to figure out how much more.”

To make a donation, visit reticenter.org.

Nathan Weiser