FRIDAy, MARCH 27 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE B5
BY HANNAH NATANSONThe federal government is
waiving a policy that required
students to come in-person to
pick up free meals during school
closures, after legislators and ad-
vocates said the rule was imperil-
ing the health of children with
compromised immune systems.
New guidance from the U.S.
Agriculture Department, issued
this week, allows school districts
to distribute meals “to a parent or
guardian to take home to their
children,” according to a copy ob-
tained by The Washington Post.
The waiver takes effect imme-
diately and applies to all states
that elect to use it. Schools will
need to develop strategies to en-
sure the meal distribution plan
retains “integrity,” Angela m.
Kline, director of policy and pro-
gram development for the USDA’s
Child Nutrition Programs, wrote
in the waiver.
Although the USDA e nvisioned
“operators providing meals di-
rectly to children,” Kline wrote,
the agency “recognizes that in this
public health emergency, con-
tinuing to require children to
come to the meal site to pick upmeals may not be practical and in
keeping with the goal of provid-
ing meals while also taking ap-
propriate safety measures.”
The federal government noti-
fied school districts of the change
late Wednesday. In a statement
Thursday morning, Agriculture
Secretary Sonny Perdue said feed-
ing children whose lives are being
upended by the coronavirus pan-
demic is a top priority for federal
officials.
“We continue to waive restric-
tions and expand flexibilities
across our programs,” Perdue
said.
following virus-related shut-
downs, school districts across the
country have converted their
empty campuses into meal distri-
bution sites — a key resource foran ever-escalating number of par-
ents as unemployment spikes na-
tionwide. But for families with
immunocompromised children
— a t higher risk of contracting the
virus and of dying if infected —
the policy of in-person pickups
was forcing wrenching decisions,
as The Post reported this week.
one mother in Prince William
County, whose 7-year-old daugh-
ter has a compromised immune
system due to cancer treatments,
said she woke each morning to an
unbearable decision.
“Do I get the food and risk my
child’s life?” asked the single
mother, who recently lost her job
as a driver due to the virus-fueled
halting of daily life in America.
“or do we go hungry, but stay
safe?”following publication of the
article, a group of lawmakers —
including U.S. Sens. mark r. War-
ner (D-Va.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.),
reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.)
and G erald E. Connolly (D-Va.),
and Virginia Del. Danica A. r oem
(D-Prince William) — urged the
USDA to change its rule.
In a joint letter to Perdue sent
Wednesday, h ours before the poli-
cy change, Warner and Kaine
wrote that in-person food pickups
are “burdensome on families and
[place] children at increased risk
— e specially those who are immu-
nocompromised.”
“removing this restriction
would go a long way to ensuring
children in Virginia have access to
healthy meals during this public
health emergency,” Warner andKaine wrote.
on Thursday, the lawmakers,
along with Virginia school em-
ployees, lauded the new rules as a
boon to the tens of thousands of
children nationwide, and possi-
bly more, whose immune systems
are compromised.
“The recent waiver from USDA
is an amazing victory for the com-
munity we serve and those who
serve on the front line,” s aid Adam
russo, director of Prince William
County Public Schools’ office of
school food and nutrition servic-
es.
on Thursday morning, the
mother of the 7-year-old drove to
pick up food from a nearby school
campus. She left her daughter at
home.
[email protected]THE REGION
After uproar, USDA allows parents to pick up school meals without kids
Va. lawmakers among
those saying policy could
imperil children’s healthlo ttery tomorrow, I’d give these
away for free.”
for all the activity, a lot of his
factory — located in an industrial
park — is still idle. He said he has
offered to detail his costs to buy-
ers so they can see he’s trying to
make items as cheaply as he can
given the constraints of a supply
chain he’s n ever used before. And,
in any case, the money he’s mak-
ing on protective gear can’t possi-
bly make up what he has lost on
his exhibits business.
mcCormick said he doesn’t
know anyone personally who has
been e xposed to the coronavirus,
but he’s h eard from several people
who believe they might have been
around others who had the illness
while attending trade shows. The
last one mcCormick attended was
the ConExpo-Con/Agg show,
which was held over four days this
month in Las Vegas.
“I was out there for six days,
you know, in the casinos out in
Vegas, when this really started to
erupt,” he said. “A nd then I had to
take a flight home, and that’s
when the reality of this started to
sink in.”
[email protected]on Wednesday he was driving a
batch to Johns Hopkins Hospital
in Baltimore to see if they would
pass muster.
“We know that a month ago,
two months ago, you could get
these gowns for a dollar,” he said.
“five days or three days ago we
were a trade show company. We’re
not a factory in China that only
makes gowns.”
He s aid the company is figuring
it out as it pushes on. His wife,
Tracy, who is the company’s co-
owner and has a background in
actuarial science, math and eco-
nomics, is helping to manage the
flood of orders. She said in an
email that if demand continues,
they hope to put more folks back
to work.
mcCormick said his company’s
experience shows the strength of
the free-enterprise system — but
also the temptations. He knows
he could charge exorbitant prices
for his newly fashioned medical
gear. But that would also be deep-
ly unethical.
“I think unabridged capitalism
can be abused,” mcCormick said.
“There’s a n ethical quality to what
we’re trying to achieve. If I win thewife established his exhibits busi-
ness about five years ago, said the
idea to rejigger his production
line came to him while he was
watching news on television and
fixing a lumberjack’s breakfast for
his three children.
As New York Gov. Andrew m.
Cuomo (D), during a regular brief-
ing, described the dire need for
personal protective equipment,
mcCormick had a thought: Why
not use his idle factory to make it?
The next day, mcCormick called
in some of the staff members and
set to work on prototypes for
masks and gowns that they creat-
ed by studying designs they found
online. many designs were set up
for 3-D printers, which he said
can be marvelous but slow tools to
use. He thought his company’s
equipment — machines that han-
dle and cut acrylic sheets and
textiles — could do better.
“We had workable gowns by
monday and workable headgear
by monday,” mcCormick said.
As word spread through social
media, such as the firm’s face-
book page, orders started rolling
in.
“It’s scary how much need
there is,” he said.
The president of the American
College of Emergency Physicians
has said that federal officials told
him that he and his colleagues
should consider strategies to deal
with a shortage of personal pro-
tective equipment such as masks
and gloves amid the pandemic. At
one New York hospital, medical
workers were each provided with
a single mask and told to take
good care of it because they might
not receive another. At another
hospital in Washington state,
workers were reportedly fashion-
ing masks and gowns out of office
supplies.
President Trump has called on
private corporations to switch
gears and produce medical gear,
including ventilators, that are
needed to treat people with the
coronavirus, and some private
businesses and corporations have
responded. ford, 3m and Gm
have teamed up to produce venti-
lators; Apple has said it will try to
locate supplies for health-care
providers; and fiat is using an
auto plant in China to manufac-
ture masks for the U.S. market,
Bloomberg News reported.
But whether that will be
enough is too soon to say, and
some have criticized the presi-
dent for being slow to invoke a
federal law that would allow the
U.S. government to commandeer
production.
mcCormick said his firm has
already sold about 10,000 units of
headgear at about $10 a pop —
which he knows would have cost a
lot less only about three months
ago. The company is working to
iron out the kinks with the supply
chain for its medical gowns, hav-
ing come up with models that are
still too expensive to produce. But
he feels it won’t be long before
that problem will be solved, too.
repurpose from B1
Firm closed by coronavirus now makes face shields, gowns
PHOTOS BY TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Hatch exhibits employee Dave Cannon prepares a sheet of plastic to be cut into face shields T uesday. eight of the company’s 23 furloughed workers have been rehired.“ This is the most of one thing I've ever made in a day,” Hatch exhibits employee rob paulson said while
making the headgear parts for protective face shields. The company sells the shields for $10 each.washingtonpost.com/buyphotos
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