South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
No more need to ration or reuse N95 masks, US says
The Biden administration has taken the first step toward ending an emergency exception that allowed hospitals to ration and reuse N95 medical masks, the first line of defense between front-line workers and the deadly coronavirus.
Thousands of medical providers have died in the COVID-19 pandemic, many exposed and infected while caring for patients without adequate protection.
Critical shortages of masks, gowns, swabs and other medical supplies prompted the Trump administration to issue guidelines for providers to ration, clean and reuse disposable equipment. Thus, throughout the pandemic, once a week many doctors and nurses were issued an N95 mask, which is normally designed to be tossed after each patient.
Now U.S. manufacturers say they have vast surpluses for sale, and hospitals say they have three- to 12-month stockpiles.
In response, the government says hospitals and health care providers should try to return to one mask per patient.
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is recommending health care personnel and facilities transition away from crisis capacity conservation strategies,” said the agency in a letter to health care personnel and facilities earlier this month.
The letter is not an order: Hospitals are still legally permitted to sterilize and reuse N95s. But in the coming weeks or months, the FDA will issue updated guidance and, eventually, require hospitals to revert to single-use, said Suzanne Schwartz, director of the FDA’s office of strategic partnerships and technology innovation.
“The ability to decontaminate was purely a last resort, an extreme measure,” Schwartz said.
The National Nurses Union, the largest professional association of registered nurses in the country, calls the new guidance “a tiny step in the right direction.” But the organization, representing 170,000 nurses, said the direction “ultimately fails” to protect nurses because it allows employers to use their discretion about what normal N95 supply is.
ICU nurse Mike Hill, who works at a Northern California hospital and is a member of the California Nurses Association, said he and his colleagues still don’t have unlimited access to N95 masks.
“They should want to make sure to protect the nurses, we’re the frontline workers,” he said. “It puts the patients and us at risk for infection. They were never intended for extended use.”
Hill’s colleague Janine Paiste-Ponder was among hundreds of medical caregivers who died after exposure to COVID-19 at the workplace in the past year. Following her July 2020 death at 59, a California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health investigation at Sutter Health’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center led to nearly $300,000 in fines for numerous COVID -related workplace safety violations.
Prestige Ameritech Executive Vice President Mike Bowen, whose Texas factory is the largest U.S. manufacturer of surgical masks, said the devices were designed to be used only once.
He said he has millions of unsold masks, as do other U.S. manufacturers that invested and ramped up.
“While nurses pleaded for clean masks, American N95 makers were filling their warehouses with N95s that hospitals weren’t buying. Starting today, America’s health care workers can and should demand clean, new N95 masks,” he said. “The N95 mask shortage is over.”