Surgeon general’s plea: Stop buying masks
The surgeon general on Saturday urged the public to stop buying masks, warning that it won’t help against the spread of the coronavirus but will take away important resources from health care professionals.
“Seriously people —
STOP BUYING MASKS!” the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning.
“They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
The plea comes as panicked consumers rush to buy masks online, including so-called N95s, a surge that has led to price gouging and counterfeit products.
In another tweet, Adams said the best way to protect against the virus is to wash hands regularly, and for those who are feeling ill to stay home.
Health officials around the world have been imploring the public to stop buying masks if they are healthy or not caring for someone who is ill. Medical professionals need a large supply of the masks because they are in direct contact with infected patients and must change their masks repeatedly.
“There are severe strains on protective equipment around the world,” said Dr. Michael J. Ryan, executive director of the health emergency program at the
World Health Organization, during a briefing on Friday. “Our primary concern is to ensure that our front line health workers are protected and that they have the equipment they need to do their jobs.”
Ryan said masks primarily prevent a person from giving the disease to someone else.
“There are limits to how a mask can protect you from being infected,” he said. “The most important thing everyone can do is wash your hands, keep your hands away from your face and observe very precise hygiene.”
Questions have also been raised about the U.S. supply of ventilators, in the event of a widespread epidemic of the new coronavirus.
In 2005, the federal government sought to assess how a respiratoryrelated pandemic might play out in the United States. Its report estimated that a severe influenza pandemic would require mechanical ventilators for 740,000 critically ill people.
Today, as the country faces the possibility of a widespread outbreak of a new respiratory infection caused by the coronavirus, there are nowhere near that many ventilators, and most are already in use. Only about 62,000 full-featured ventilators were in hospitals across the country, a 2010 study found. More than 10,000 others are stored in the Strategic National Stockpile, a federal cache of supplies and medicines held in case of emergencies, according to Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tens of thousands of other respiratory devices could be repurposed in an emergency, experts say, but the shortfall would be stark, potentially forcing doctors to make excruciating lifeor-death decisions about who would get such help should hospitals become flooded with the desperately sick.
Much about the coronavirus remains unclear, and it is far from certain that the outbreak will reach severe proportions in the United States or affect many regions at once. With its top-notch scientists, modern hospitals and sprawling public health infrastructure, most experts agree, the United States is among the countries best prepared to prevent or manage such an epidemic.