Sacramento’s Chinese community members donate medical supplies to help fight coronavirus

Surgical masks have been in dire shortage for health care providers across the country and in California amid the coronavirus outbreak. From the Sacramento area all the way to China, several Chinese community members are lending a hand.

Jane Zhang, vice president of the Zhejiang University Alumni Association, recalled seeing flyers from Kaiser Roseville in mid-March showing how the hospital staff needed personal protection equipment. A doctor sent a picture of how he sterilized his N95 mask in the oven after he got home.

“The doctor told us they can reuse the masks five times,” Zhang said. “We felt really sad after we saw the pictures.”

That was the catalyst for the group to do something. In 48 hours, the members raised $20,000 via a WeChat group, enough to purchase 45,000 surgical masks to hospitals from a manufacturing company in Southern California.

While the supply was not huge, Zhang said, it covered the two weeks during a time when some hospitals were still sourcing for supplies. So far they’ve delivered masks to 35 hospitals and individual practitioners in Sacramento and beyond. Mercy General Hospital received 5,000 masks April 2. Another 5,000 masks went to Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento last week.

David Tang, an anesthesiologist at Mercy General, said the masks gave the front-line health care providers some assurance and relief. Zijiang Xu, a cardiologist at Sutter, said the additional masks provided a safety net to have a stock while hospitals are still securing a stable supply.

“It really reflected the support and care of the community and this brings a warm feeling,” Xu said.

Zhang believed it is a responsibility to help as Chinese Americans.

“It is a minimum of what we can do as citizens,” Zhang said. “If everyone can contribute a little bit, together we can fight and win this.”

Members of the Elk Grove Chinese Association raised $8,000 to purchase 10,000 FDA-approved medical supplies which arrived April 9. The supplies were sent to Kaiser Permanente in south Sacramento and UC Davis Medical Center.

Jane Liang, vice president of the Chinese American community organization, said they want to step up doing their part as Americans, especially when many Asians have been targets of discriminatory acts and blamed for bringing COVID-19 to the United States.

“This is a humanity issue,” she said. “We want to do our part as citizens to fight COVID-19.”

“Returning the kindness”

Months before the masks were shipped from China, people in Sacramento sent help that way.

Grace Liu from the Jinan Sacramento Sister Cities Corporation described it as “a tale of two cities”: In late February, when “masks fell off the face of the earth” as the COVID-19 outbreak began in China, Sacramento citizens shipped masks to Jinan, a city in Eastern China, to help relieve the situation. Now, Liu says Jinan citizens were returning the kindness. They raised enough money to buy and ship 8,000 surgical masks from Jinan to Sacramento, and later, around 20,000 more. The masks were dropped off for workers with Sacramento Regional Transit, local hospitals and small clinics.

“We didn’t expect the pandemic to spread the U.S.,” Liu said. “When we helped them it was solely for goodwill. We didn’t expect anything in return. Now they (citizens of Jinan) and paying back a drop of water with a well.”

A group of health care providers focused on supporting individual practitioners and their staffers, who are in dire need of surgical masks. Compared to major hospitals, clinics have weaker supply chains for medical resources, but the practitioners there are in the front line in direct contact with the patients, according to Dali Fan, a cardiologist at UC Davis Health and president of the Chinese American Medical Association of California.

Spotting the need for assistance, Fan said the medical association mounted up a sizable amount of gear, including 5,000 surgical masks from suppliers in China, and distributed them to local clinics in Sacramento.

Association members raised money and sent equipment to Wuhan in January as the Chinese city confronted the COVID-19 outbreak with a scant supply of protective gear. Reading about the surging number of infections and deaths, the situation in China seemed like something “in the movies,” Fan recalled.

“As a normal human being, wouldn’t you want to donate something to help?” he said.

But no one expected things to hit here, Fan said. Now, people have shifted the focus to support Sacramento, mobilizing members and resources to provide support thousands of miles away.

“If we can take care of these people, we could effectively flatten the curve,” Fan said.

About 100 families from NewStar Chinese School in Davis donated $12,000 to purchase 15,000 masks and 100,000 gloves from a Chinese manufacturing company, according to Kun Di, the school’s principal. He said it took a week to find a source that sells FDA-approved masks and ships in a timely manner.

Many parents suggested making donations to help China since early February.

“We had families in China, we had to help,” Di said. “We also have relatives and friends and families here in Davis, and out of empathy we should also help the people here. With disasters here happening, we are very willing to do our part and help. We do whatever we can.”

Some Chinese citizens who have children studying in the U.S. have also helped. Ni Zhang’s daughter is a student at University of California, Davis. Within two days, she and other parents in China of UC Davis students raised about 80,000 yuan, equivalent of $11,300, and bought 18,000 masks through the same company NewStar worked with. Together with the school, the supplies have been shipped and distributed to Davis police, stores and the school district, as well as hospitals in Sacramento, Woodland and Vacaville.

“We saw online that supplies have been lacking here in California, so we want to contribute a little bit,” she said. “If we can help Davis to protect doctors here, we are protecting our children,”she said.

Zheng Wang, whose daughter once studied at UC Davis, remembered visiting the Capitol in Sacramento.

“We don’t want the beautiful memories in our brain to be destroyed by the pandemic. We want to try our best to help,” he said.

Every mask matters

Some supply donations were obtained by word of mouth.

Lingling Yu, a working mother in south Sacramento, was concerned about the lack of surgical masks for health care providers after checking online and found most sources were out of stock.

“We need to win time over and act quickly,” Yu said.

On March 24, she, along a group of local mothers, used their homes as a station for collecting supplies, and spread the word on social media to encourage people to drop off donations.

“Every mask matters,” Yu said, “Even if it is just five masks, there will be five health care professionals who can have masks.”

In five days, the women collected 3,700 standard masks, 60 N95 masks and other medical supplies. They dispersed the resources to Sacramento hospitals, as well as police and fire departments, in boxes labeled as “Sacramento Chinese Community.”

“I love my home, the people,” she said. “We cannot be bystanders at this difficult times. Even if its just a little bit, we can make a difference.”

This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 11:07 AM.