Coronavirus supplies from Las Vegas on way to China hospitals

On Tuesday morning, the staff of a Las Vegas law office loaded a truck with 31 boxes of surgical gloves, goggles and gowns. The items were bound for a shipping company in Southern California, an overseas flight and ultimately a hospital in China’s Hubei province, the center of a virus outbreak that has killed hundreds of people and sickened tens of thousands.

Michelle Zhang, a legal assistant at the Law Offices of Eric K. Chen, had received an urgent plea from her sister for medical supplies for a hospital in Huangshi, a city in Hubei, where she works as a nurse.

Chen used his ties in the Las Vegas medical community to purchase thousands of dollars of supplies to send to hospitals overrun with patients stricken by a new type of coronavirus. The virus causes respiratory symptoms that range from mild to life-threatening.

The effort is part of a grassroots response by Chinese Americans in Las Vegas to help Chinese hospitals, their doctors and patients by purchasing medical supplies, navigating customs regulations and arranging transport to an area of China that is in lockdown to keep the outbreak from spreading further.

Another Las Vegas business, investment firm Oasis Global Partners, is using its contacts in the U.S. and abroad to get the goods to the hospitals, Chen said.

“It’s a very typical response of the Chinese diaspora,” said Elenis Wong, who works in Chen’s law office and helped coordinate the effort. “The way the Chinese network works, it’s very efficient.”

Ruomei Wang, president of the nonprofit Nevada Chinese Association, said it sent 1,000 pounds of supplies worth $10,000 to two Hubei hospitals last week. The supplies made it through customs in Shanghai but still must get to the hospitals.

“It’s quite a struggle,” Wang said, and the association is arranging more shipments of supplies, which are getting harder to find because of high demand.

Las Vegas loan officer Jia Mei Wang said she bought thousands of dollars of medical supplies on the internet to send to China, only to learn that they were past their expiration date. She has since gotten her money back and located other suppliers.

“You can’t feel joy in your heart because of what’s going on in China,” she said.

Like others interviewed for this story, she said she relies heavily on WeChat, a messaging app popular in China, to learn more about the circumstances in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, and what’s needed at the hospitals there.

“We have a big heart for anyone who is stricken by this virus,” said Jiaming Zhang, secretary of the Nevada Chinese Association and a dealer on the Strip. “Not only because they’re Chinese but as human beings, and they need help. We should reach out our hand to help out.”

Michelle Zhang said the outbreak has made her family members afraid; one of her sisters lives near the seafood and animal market in Wuhan where researchers believe the outbreak originated when the virus transferred from animals to humans.

She and her sisters are worried about their parents, who live outside Wuhan. Their mother won’t leave their house. But her father, who is a doctor of Chinese medicine, continues to see patients at the hospital.

“He’s really brave,” Michelle Zhang said. “We are more worried than him.”

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on Twitter.