Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post on Sunday that the company would be donating 720,000 masks to help protect health care workers during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
Health care workers are treating an increasing number of Wuhan coronavirus patients and many of those workers lack the proper medical equipment to protect themselves from contracting the virus.
For its part, the private sector has been generous in responding to the challenges of the coronavirus. Apple recently announced the company would be donating two million masks to protect health care workers, and Carnival Cruise Lines offered up their ships to serve as extra hospital space during the coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. has seen a sharp rise in the demand for masks since the outbreak of the coronavirus in the United States. At a press briefing on Sunday, President Trump announced that "hundreds of tons of supplies" from the nation's stockpile have been deployed to areas that need them most. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services aims to buy 500 million masks over the next 18 months for the Strategic National Stockpile.