‘At war with no ammo’: Virus protective gear runs short
Doctors fear risk to themselves, families, writes Andrew Jacobs
The Open Cities Community Health Center in St Paul, Minnesota, is considering shutting down because it doesn’t have enough face masks. Doctors at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St Louis are performing invasive procedures on coronavirus patients with loose-fitting surgical masks rather than the tight respirator masks recommended by health agencies. At a Los Angeles emergency room, doctors were given a box of expired masks, and when they tried to put them on, the elastic bands snapped.
With coronavirus cases soaring, doctors, nurses and other front-line medical workers across the United States are confronting a dire shortage of masks, surgical gowns and eye gear to protect them from the virus.
In interviews, doctors said they were increasingly anxious, fearing they could expose not only themselves to the virus but also their families and others.
“There’s absolutely no way to protect myself,” said Dr Faezah Bux, an anaesthesiologist in central Kentucky who in recent days had to intubate several elderly patients in respiratory distress without the respirator masks and protective eye gear recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Not only can I not protect myself, I can’t protect my patients.”
At a White House briefing Thursday, President Donald Trump said that millions of masks were in production and that the federal government had made efforts to address the shortages, though he did not provide details. But he said it was largely up to governors to deal with the problem.
“The federal government’s not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping,” Mr Trump said. “You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”
While doctors grappled with supply problems, the State Department advised Americans who are abroad to either come home now or plan to stay overseas until the pandemic is under control. In Italy, the death toll is now more than 3,400, a higher number of fatalities than even in China.
In the United States, the number of reported cases grew to more than 11,000 on Thursday, as Senate Republicans released a plan that would provide checks of up to $1,200 (about 39,000 baht) for many taxpayers and Gov Gavin Newsom of California issued an order that state residents “stay at home”.
The president also said there were no immediate plans to address medical equipment shortages by activating the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that authorises presidents to take extraordinary action to force American industry to ramp up production of equipment needed for national security.
“We hope we are not going to need it,” he said.
The president’s optimistic statements contrasted starkly with the situation on the ground, particularly in Washington and New York, the states with the largest number of coronavirus cases.
Earlier this week, administrators informed doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan that they were down to a one-week supply of respirator masks but were working to get more, according to a physician familiar with the situation.
Rebecca Bartles, who heads infection prevention efforts for the Providence St Joseph hospital chain based in Washington, said it was only a matter of days before some of the system’s 51 hospitals and 800 clinics run out of personal protective equipment — a situation that imperils the nation’s ability to respond to a pandemic still in its early stages.
“We’re on Mile 1 of a marathon,” she said, adding, “What does mile 25 look like?”
Health care workers’ fears are not abstract. Two emergency room doctors in New Jersey and Washington have been hospitalised in critical condition, dozens of other health care workers across the country have already fallen ill, and hundreds have been forced into quarantine.
“We are at war with no ammo,” said a surgeon in Fresno, California, who said she had no access to even the most basic surgical masks in her outpatient clinic and has a limited supply of the tightfitting respirator masks in the operating room. Like many doctors interviewed, she asked not to be quoted by name, worried about retribution from administrators for speaking out.
Federal health officials say respirator masks can be used for eight hours of continuous or intermittent use and should be discarded after treating an infected patient. Many doctors around the country said they are being given just one, to use indefinitely, and they spray it down with Lysol or wipe it off, not knowing whether that will help preserve it.
Howard Mell, a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, said the crisis requires decisive federal action. He urged the White House to ramp up production of medical gear through the Defense Production Act powers, and he called on federal authorities to increase distributions from the Strategic National Stockpile, a repository of critical medical supplies for public health emergencies.