COVID-19 Pandemic in Northern California

VIDA has been continuing to provide assistance to Bay Area projects by directing medical supplies to projects working with vulnerable communities. Although the Bar Area has a high vaccination rate, there still remain significant pockets of individuals who remain at high risk of contracting COVID-19 variants. Many of those individuals are immigrants who due to a variety of reasons remain un-vaccinated and live and work in high risk environments.

One group that VIDA has been working closely with is CRECE (Central American Refugee Committee) located in Oakland. CRECE is a grassroots organization assists refugees from Central and South America with housing, employment, immigration and basic services such as food and clothing. Given their legal and economic status, many of their clients are at extremely high risk. VIDA has been providing CRECE with hundreds of boxes of masks, gloves and sanitizer to distribute in the community over the past year. In addition VIDA has donated supplies that CRECE has transported to El Salvador to clinics providing care to impoverished individuals.

VIDA’s work is made possible by our generous donors. We thank you and GlobalGiving for helping us carry-out our lifesaving work.

VIDA continues to marshal our assets and partnerships to maximize our international and domestic response to the pandemic. VIDA has donated aid through our partners initially in China and then throughout Central and South America, The Caribbean, Philippines, Armenia and now Ethiopia.

Domestically, VIDA has been helping the very hospitals that have been the life blood of our mission for nearly 30 years for our work overseas. VIDA initially supplied Stanford with 38 hospital beds, 72 over bed tables, 24 supply carts, 84 IV Poles, and 32 linen hampers. In addition, VIDA donated a pallet of respiratory supplies and equipment to their Ripon based partner Assist International who will be helping out community clinics in the area. VIDA is also worked with Washington Hospital in Fremont, California. VIDA has donated 30 beds, 5 gurneys and over 1,000 surgical gowns. In addition, VIDA has also donated a pallet of PPE supplies to outfit a number of nursing homes and rehabilitations facilities that surround the hospital. VIDA has also been supplying local nursing homes and rehab facilities in the East Bay that have reached out for help with basic medical supplies.

In February, VIDA supplied additional hospital beds, IV Poles, over bed tables to Stanford to assist them in building out additional capacity. Given the recent decline in cases, VIDA is redirecting our domestic work to more impacted areas. VIDA is working with our partner Globus to send aid to highly impacted regions of the nation that they serve. To date, VIDA has shipped 148 pallets of medical supplies and 60 hospital beds and other equipment to Globus to distribute.

As the United States continues to be battered by this pandemic, we ask for your help and thank you for your continued support during these unprecedented times.