Chester Rotary donates 2,000 masks to educators, first responders

The Chester Rotary on Tuesday donated 2,000 face masks, courtesy of Rotary International, to educators at Green Mountain Unified School District and to Chester’s first responders, including Emergency Medical Technicians, firefighters and the Chester Police, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Chester Rotary President Ian Montgomery, Rotary International financed the masks in its Million Mask Challenge. In late September, 800,000 masks arrived at the Port of Boston and were quickly distributed to front-line workers across the Northeast.

Then this past week, in the second wave,  200,000 masks were distributed by the Million Mask Truck that drop off masks to every Rotary that requested it after missing the first distribution. The Ludlow Rotary was also part of this latest distribution.

Montgomery says he was thrilled to be able to pick out FFP2 masks, which have almost as high a performance rating as the N-95 masks. They are also good for more hours than a regular paper mask.

FFP2 masks filter out at least 94 percent of particulate of .3 microns and higher; N-95 masks filter out at least 95 percent.

As for getting the masks, he said, “It was a case of being in the right place at the right time … they would serve our  teachers well and it would serve our front-line workers in the town well.”

“The teachers are doing such a difficult job at the moment. This will be better for them than the standard paper ones,” Montgomery said.