Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone has secured the former K-Mart site in Assembly Square so that Partners HealthCare can deploy cutting edge N95 protective mask cleaning technology. The new machine, developed by Battelle, will be able to clean 80,000 masks per day and will go into production early next week. It will be the fourth such site in the United States.

This is Mayor Curtatone’s full statement on this exciting development – “We’ve got to move fast and be nimble to handle the coming coronavirus surge. It hasn’t even been a week since Battelle’s technology got approved by the FDA. Partners is able to bring it over and we’re able to provide them with a facility where they can use it. This is how it’s supposed to work in a crisis. Everybody comes together to do big things. The whole purpose of having emergency powers at a time like this is to use them. In this case we’re able to put technology into production that’s going to protect the frontline healthcare workers who are protecting all of us.”