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Pflugerville nursing homes in need of safety equipment to protect residents from COVID-19

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Published  April 3, 2020 9:40pm CDT
Pflugerville
FOX 7 Austin

Pflugerville nursing homes in need of safety equipment to protect residents from COVID-19

The Pflugerville Fire Department has set up a donation drive to help out those most vulnerable to the virus in their community.

PFLUGERVILLE, Texas - Pflugerville nursing homes are in desperate need of safety gear like N-95 masks. The fire department is looking to pick up donations for them and even offered some of these facilities their own masks.

“We’re talking about elderly folks we are talking about people that already have existing health conditions so they’re already at risk and they are at risk of it spreading in the nursing home,” said Pflugerville Fire battalion chief Mark Moellenberg.

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The fire department has set up a donation drive to help out those most vulnerable to the virus in their community. “So those folks working in the nursing home facilities can better protect their residents,” said Moellenberg.

When the pandemic first hit the area, Moellenberg said they noticed nursing homes in the area either had little to no protective gear like N-95 masks, so they offered some of the ones they had. “They are in need of a lot more than we were able to give them, we were only able to give them a few of what we had,” said Moellenberg.

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Now they are hoping to get a hand from the community in order to help the nursing home community. “Oftentimes people have these masks in their garages for home projects like mowing the lawn and stuff like that so we are asking if anybody has any supplies if they could bring them to the fire station here,” said Moellenberg.

One of the best ways Moellenberg said to protect the most vulnerable is to also protect those who assist them. “The reality is that our folks in the health care industries first responders on the front line they aren’t getting to stay at home they are having to go to work and they are having to make do with what they have,” said Moellenberg.

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