COVID Tech Connect

Every time a number is added to the pandemic fatality count, someone’s life has ended.

So many of these people are dying in hospitals where they can’t have a single visitor, not one more hug, not one more kiss, not one more chance to touch and be touched.

They’re in total isolation. They are going to die alone.

And some of them aren’t even going to get the chance to see their beloved’s faces because they don’t have a way to make a video call.

Seriously. Can you imagine?

The health care front line started speaking out. A nurse at Lenox Hill, a doctor at Weill Cornell, soon their voices asking for help on behalf of their hospice patients were multiplied.

Over 50 hospitals asked for tablet devices for those final visits, those last conversations.

Four tech execs who belong to a professional network* decided to act.

This small-but-super-awesome team has experience in the key skill sets: technology, logistics, grassroots organizing, and communications.

In just days, they created COVID Tech Connect.

With their connections, they got tens of thousands of tablets donated, along with warehousing and distribution services.

They still need to pay for actual delivery to hospitals and that’s where this AWB money will go.

We know, it’s one of the saddest awesome projects ever. We are grateful that Anjali Kumar, Kristina Libby, Benish Shah, Sara Rodell, and Christina Wallace could not turn away from the need when they saw it.

Find out how you can help here.

There will probably be similar needs in about 6000 hospitals in the USA within the 90 days or so that the virus is expected to spread widely.

Saying goodbye is never easy, but it doesn’t have to be impossible.

*(disclosure: two AWB Trustees are also members of that network)