Missouri to award grants for Covid-19 relief

State officials have announced 50-million dollars in new grant programs for Missouri businesses impacted by COVID-19. Missouri Department of Economic Development (DED) Director Rob Dixon says a 30-million dollar grant program will help provide relief to small businesses and family farms and can be used for things such as facility redesign and labor, air filtration systems and workers salaries during closure or reduced hours.

The other 20-million dollar program is aimed at increasing production of personal protective equipment (PPE). Director Dixon says PPE supply is critical to Missouri’s health care response and to the economy’s re-opening “We need to bring PPE manufacturing closer to home, to make sure that we’re not dependent on any other country for these vital products. So to those Missouri companies who’ve already begun making PPE, we thank you sincerely”

More than two hundred Missouri companies have retooled to produce PPE. The 20-million dollar grant program will assist Missouri manufacturers, by awarding grants to reimburse companies facing high PPE production costs. Missouri now has 33,094 confirmed COVID-19 cases, an increase of 18-hundred from Friday.