Showing that there's no shortage of kindness during an international crisis, several local businesses and community members are stepping up to help frontline healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the hot commodities flying off the shelves in recent weeks has been hand sanitizer. In an effort to help, nine Chatham-Kent companies and several local individuals have come together to produce and donate hundreds of litres of sanitizer, with the intention of making more to deliver next week.
Andrew Thiel, president of Abstract Marketing Inc., said he started reaching out to people after he watched a segment on the news which focused on a distillery in the U.S. that changed its production model to make hand sanitizer.
"With my wife being a nurse, I wanted to try to do something for the healthcare community," said Thiel in an interview with Blackburn News. "Every single person I approached... not one person said 'no'. Everyone was just like 'how can I help?' and 'what do you need?'"
Angelo Ligori, a senior advisor at Greenfield, initially committed 210 litres of alcohol to the project but an additional 1,000 litres was later donated after some collaboration between Greenfield and the mayor's office.
Chatham-Kent's director of Economic Development put Thiel in contact with Michael Brnadic, the owner Bootlegger Distillery in Bothwell, who was able to help in the creation process. He found a recipe for sanitizer recommended by the World Health Organization, which also called for peroxide and glycerol.
Tim VerBeek of Platinum Produce donated 100 litres of peroxide. Meanwhile, Oriano Bernardi of Heritage Dental, Ted Dalios of Chatham Denture Specialists, and Jason Fox of Fox Farms donated the funds to purchase glycerol. However, with glycerol also being in high demand, Thiel enlisted help from Derek Roberston who was able to coordinate the purchase.
Thiel said the plan was to put the sanitizer into 26-litre containers with a spout so that workers could fill up individual bottles as they need. But the owner of Cabela's said it would take approximately seven working days before the containers would be delivered. Thiel once again sought some help from those in the community, which resulted in Joy Kilby and Britanny Shettel buying and shipping several containers from locations in Barrie and Ottawa to Chatham-Kent.
Rob Schepanowski of Impact Signs offered to make the product labels and Brian Weber of First Choice Disaster Restoration offered to take care of transportation needs.
"This batch was called Nurse No.09 because there were nine companies that got involved," said Thiel.
Delivering the Nurse No. 09 sanitizer. (Photo courtesy of Andrew Thiel).
The first batch made 260 litres of sanitizer, enough to fill 10 containers. Thiel said nine containers were recently delivered to the Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit for them to distribute accordingly and one container went to Family Services Kent after they had created a Facebook post, pleading for supplies.
"I actually had tears in my eyes when we were accepting it," said Jyl Panjer, manager of community support services. "Earlier in the day, we were only successful in finding one small pump of Purell in the community and there was nothing available online or with any of our suppliers. We were pretty worried about what we were going to do for our staff and our volunteers."
Panjer said many of the staff and volunteers have face-to-face contact with community members as Family Services Kent provides transportation to and from doctors' appointments, get groceries for seniors, and provide at-home assessments.
"These are all services that are necessary for someone to survive in their home," said Panjer.
The only thing better than receiving something as vital as sanitizer during this pandemic is knowing more is on the way.
"[Thiel] said it could be as early as next week that more is available so we're very grateful for that," she said.
However, the next batch of sanitizer will have a different label.
"Our second batch, we're actually going to call it Nurse No.10 because another company came on board, Holland Optical," said Thiel. "We had some unforeseen costs that we had to get covered and they came in [on Thursday] and covered that."
Nurse No.09. (Photo courtesy of Andrew Thiel).
Thiel said the second batch is expected to produce 1,250-1,300 litres of sanitizer and should be ready by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.
"We're going to see how long these first 10 containers last and then go from there," he said. "The problem is the alcohol. Greenfield Ethanol was very generous and donated the alcohol but right now it's something that's wanted all over the world."
Thiel said they're going to continue producing sanitizer for as long as they can.
In the meantime, Panjer said since creating the Facebook post they have also received donations of gloves. At this time, Family Services Kent is still in need of surgical-style masks (medical grade are preferred). Panjer asks that residents willing to donate, call ahead of time to (519) 354-6221.