With coronavirus infection surging in Florida, Palm Beach County, the state’s third most-populous county, enacted a mandatory mask order in June. To reinforce the message with residents, the county has undertaken an ambitious program to send four branded masks to each of its nearly 659,000 residential addresses.
That’s a total of around 2.64 million masks.
The masks—two reusable and two disposable—are branded with the words “Combat COVID” alongside the Palm Beach County logo. They’re part of a mailer that also includes printed materials on proper mask usage, tips for social distancing and information on hurricane season. The county is printing the flyers at its in-plant.
#PBCNews: Today #PBC started mailing out face masks to all county residences. Today's mail was for the areas of Belle Glade, Pahokee, Canal Point & South Bay.
A total of 11,477 envelopes were mailed. @VoteMcKinlay @flcounties @NACoTweets #TeamPBC #MaskOnPBC #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/hHozOpO37f
— Palm Beach County (@pbcgov) July 20, 2020
Palm Beach Mayor Dave Kerner said in a press conference that the county had $35 million in CARES Act funding set aside specifically for PPE. The project cost about $4 million, he said.
“We want to make sure that every member of this community, no matter where you live, has access to the personal protective equipment that is needed to keep yourself safe and members of the public and community at large safe,” Kerner said at another news conference.
https://twitter.com/pbcgov/status/1285669112593686528?s=20
The mailing will take place over several weeks. The county sent out its first round of mailers on Monday, totaling more than 11,000 to addresses across four zip codes.
