PORT ANGELES – Local emergency management officials say the community needs more personal protective devices. And they’re asking for more volunteers to make them if possible.

Clallam County Undersheriff Ron Cameron donations of the masks have dipped.

“We are still in need of the homemade mask the donations of kind of dropped off a bit. We only got about a hundred in yesterday, when we’ve been averaging about 400 a day. We think 6,000 we still probably need for the homemade masks. So we’re still far short of what we need.”

There are a couple of Facebook groups for Sequim and Port Angeles that have launched to share patterns and collect masks. The donated masks should be dropped off at the Vern Burton Center Monday-Friday between 10 am and 2 pm. Officials will make sure they’re properly sterilized and get to the proper agencies that need them.

Meantime, Cameron says the county is trying to gather a more accurate count of personal protective equipment needed. That’s so they can try to get more help from the state.

“We are really working hard with our planning groups and our operations groups and everybody to try to get a really good number of the personal protective equipment that we need and forecast that really helps us so that we can put in our Consolidated order every week to the state and that’s required by next Monday. We hope to have it in tomorrow”

There are no new positive cases of COVID-19 in Clallam County. The county as tested 442 people, and still 8 positives. There are 69 pending.

Cameron says the new rapid tests that are becoming available across the country but will probably not be available for the local community for quite a while.