Coming Together to Fight COVID-19
D
isaster response is nothing new to ISEA members. After all, they’ve been there through oil spills, hurricanes, terrorist attacks and countless other disasters. But COVID-19 was different. Even though early intelligence warned COVID-19 would be big, ISEA members had no idea just how much of an impact the virus would have on the healthcare system. “Hospitals run on a just-in-time system. And so when they were hit with all these 4
INT ERNATIONAL SAFETY E QUI P M E N T ASSOCI ATI ON
ISEA and its members stepped up in a big way to protect the public during the pandemic additional patients and the medical supply chain was emptied, the safety industry had a large surge in demand for certified worker protection gear,” says Craig Wallentine, immediate past chair of the ISEA board of trustees. “That wasn’t the biggest issue, though, because we’re accustomed to abnormal demand spikes. What caught everybody by surprise was that the demand just kept rising and rising beyond anything we had seen before.”
