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Operating out of their 360,000-square-foot factory in Easton, Pa., sports apparel company Fanatics is making medical masks and gowns out of polyester mesh fabric meant for Phillies and Yankees jerseys — and donating them to hospitals in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
Rubin came up with the idea after watching the news last week.
"So, I thought to myself, 'Wait a second. Could we turn that into a plant to make masks and gowns?'" Michael Rubin, Fanatics founder and limited ownership partner of the NBA's Sixers, told NBC Sports Philadelphia.
While Rubin considered how he could make it happen, St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem reached out to Fanatics late last week, asking for masks.
These are Level 1 masks, used for low-risk, nonsurgical procedures that are for single-use only — not the N95 masks that provide the most protection to health care workers from the coronavirus. And we don’t know how exactly these masks will be used.
Rubin says he hopes to produce nearly 15,000 masks and gowns a day. The production plant had been shut down as a nonessential business but about 100 workers have returned to work for Fanatics.
Rubin said it would cost Fanatics about $3 million to make the masks and gowns, with a production goal of at least 1 million over the next two months. Fanatics and MLB are partnering to pay for the project.
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