'A Mask for Every Utahn' allotment reached; online ordering discontinued

The Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) has announced that the  “A Mask for Every Utahn” program has discontinued online ordering of individual mask requests because it reached the total allotment of masks available for the initiative.

“A Mask for Every Utahn” was a public-private partnership providing free face masks to Utahns who didn’t have one.

The state of Utah, through an arrangement with the Utah Manufacturers Association, outdoor products manufacturer Cotopaxi and clothing retailer HM Cole, purchased 2.3 million face masks to help protect the health of Utahns during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The state’s order for masks helped to save more than 300 jobs by keeping Utah manufacturers open, GOED said.

“We want to thank the Utah Manufacturers Association, Cotopaxi, HM Cole, Utah State Mail and all others involved with this project,” said Ben Hart, GOED’s deputy director and the state worker responsible for the initiative. “Through this project, we were able to distribute over a million free masks to Utahns. We could not have done this without the work and volunteer efforts of all who were involved. We hope Utahn’s benefited from this project as we do what we can to help try and slow the spread of COVID-19.”

The “A Mask for Every Utahn” project fulfilled nearly 1.24 million masks requests from almost 280,000 household orders. The program also provided masks to all K-12 school students, teachers and faculty in the state, which amounted to approximately 750,000 masks. The program also sent 140,000 masks to grocery stores for free distribution.