UNH community supports frontlines during COVID-19 crisis
When COVID-19 began to spread, UNH Police Chief Paul Dean, who is also serving as vice president of public safety and risk management for the campus, put out the call for supplies across the university, and between his stockpile and contributions from labs and departments campus wide, has collected some 45,000 pairs of gloves, 11,000 surgical masks, 4,800 N-95 respirators, 216 protective gowns and 38 Tyvek suits. These are being distributed to hospitals and health care facilities in the region as they are needed and are also available to first responders in Newmarket and Dover and to caregivers at Durham’s new RiverWoods retirement community.
In addition to providing the personal protective equipment (PPE) Dean’s team has collected, UNH is also helping create PPEs, with support from at least one generous alumnus. UNH’s Entrepreneurship Center (ECenter), the UNH Innovation ECenter Makerspace and other university facilities are deploying their 3D printers to print head bands for protective face shields that are being manufactured by the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, with more than 150 completed to date.
Another all-hands-on-deck collaborative effort is the work that’s been done to convert the Hamel Rec Center into an emergency care site — one of seven prepared across the state at the request of Gov. Chris Sununu and the State Department of Health and Human Services. Working with four local hospitals — Exeter, Portsmouth Regional, Dover’s Wentworth-Douglass and Frisbie in Rochester — and under the direction of the New Hampshire National Guard, UNH has set up cots and care stations in the Hamel Rec basketball courts for up to 250 patients, to be used in the event these hospitals reach inpatient capacity and need a place to transfer individuals who are well enough to leave the acute-care setting but need several more days of medical support before returning home. Dean notes that volunteer caregivers are currently being identified and will include retired doctors and nurses living in the area. The facility, if needed, will be strictly for patients transferred from area hospitals and will not be open to the general public.
In addition, the university will be offering its services to support a drive-through COVID-19 testing site, if needed, and UNH dining will provide takeout meals for anyone sheltering on the Durham campus, which may include patients and quarantined health workers as well as the small subset of the student body — primarily international students — that was unable to find safe accommodations off campus. The university is also making its laboratory equipment available to medical personnel working to combat COVID-19, particularly those involved with efforts to ramp up New Hampshire’s testing capacity.
Read the full story from UNH here.