If you are a healthcare worker in need of masks or if you are someone who has masks to donate, there is a new website that will match masks with healthcare workers at Mask Match. 

Mask Match is a peer-to-peer platform to get masks to healthcare workers on the front lines. Because some hospitals have a shortage of masks, they have to limit the number of masks healthcare workers can use. While companies are producing more, that takes time and this website is a way to get the healthcare workers masks as soon as possible. 

Mask Match is asking people to donate filtration masks such as N95s, surgical masks and homemade masks as well. Mask Match asks healthcare workers who need masks and those who have them to fill out an online form with their information. The website verifies the identities of the healthcare worker and emails a match to the donor so the masks can be shipped directly to the healthcare worker. They also try to get the masks to people as geographically close as possible. 

Donors can also request to ship locally. You can even donate one mask if that is all you have. It usually takes the website a day or two to make a match. 

Liz Klinger, a San Francisco native, who started this website, is the daughter of a lifelong nurse who is at high risk for a severe case of COVID-19. When Klinger found out her mom’s floor was unable to get masks and PPE from the management, she panicked. Klinger said, “I didn’t want my mom to die. Plus some of her co-workers are single parents or over 65+…the situation is truly frightening out there.” 

Klinger decided she had to do something to help hospitals like the one her mom was working at. Some hospitals don’t have enough PPE and others are locking up supplies and discouraging the use because of shortage fears or anticipation of them being stolen. Other hospitals might not accept masks from the public due to liability concerns. This website is a way to get the masks directly to the healthcare worker without the hospital intercepting them. 

Klinger was able to get her website up and running in under a week with the help of her friend Chloe Alpert, CEO of Medinas Health, a company that helps hospitals manage medical equipment inventory. Mask Match is ran by these two women and a small base of volunteers. The site was launched on Thursday, April 2nd and as of Monday, April 6thy, they had already helped get more than 70,000 masks delivered.