Doctors: Shortage of protective gear is dire

The Open Cities Community Health Center in St. Paul, Minn., is considering shutting down because it doesn’t have enough face masks. Doctors at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis are performing invasive procedures 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.

“There’s absolutely no way to protect myself,” said Faezah A. Bux, an anesthesiologist in central Kentucky who in recent days had to intubate several elderly patients in respiratory distress without the N95 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 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 governments aren’t supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping,” Trump said. “You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”

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, often referred to as PPE — a situation that imperils the nation’s ability to respond to a pandemic still in its early stages.

“We’re on mile one of a marathon. If we’re out of PPE now, what does mile 25 look like?” she said.

The fears of health care workers are not abstract. Two emergency room doctors in New Jersey and Washington state infected by the virus have been hospitalized in critical condition, dozens of other health care workers have already fallen ill and hundreds have been forced into quarantine.

“We are at war with no ammo,” said a surgeon in Fresno, Calif., who asked not to be quoted by name because she worried about retribution from administrators for speaking out.

JOVELLE TAMAYO/NEW YORK TIMES Sue Giboney, executive director of patient experience at Providence St. Joseph Health in Seattle, demonstrates how to make a face mask Tuesday. The lack of gear is imperiling the ability of medical workers to fight the coronavirus — and putting their own lives at risk.