No one knows exactly how many face masks have been made. Our local craftivists have made more than 60,000 masks that we have tracked, along with the locations for their delivery, via a form on this website, as of April 2020. That's about 12,000 masks per week, just from our volunteers! And there are many groups doing similar work.
Our regional goal is to try to influence and facilitate the making of at least 100,000 masks in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. We provide a real time count on our website home page to let you all know how we are doing. We believe we can do it!
Get PPE has been tracking the effort nationally, and found that as of April 2020, about 160,000 masks have been made nationally based on forms submitted on their website. Our organizing team believes that tally way undercounts the actual masks made nationally.
An Ohio sewing business that is encouraging mask making, and also selling sewing machines and kits, believes as many as 20-million masks have been made, based on hashtags and posts on social media. The truth is that it may be easier to ultimately quantify COVID-19 cases than it will be to absolutely count how many face masks have been made.
Based on similar Facebook groups, that have reported making tens of thousands of masks, our organizing team believes that nationally, we will certainly cross the "one million masks" goal.