Doctors and nurses told POLITICO they’re still recycling protective equipment and worry vulnerable areas are being overlooked.
President Donald Trump often opens his evening news briefings on the pandemic by rattling off a list of actions his administration has taken to secure protective gear for frontline health workers, claiming dire shortages have been resolved.
But hospitals, nursing homes and caregivers across the country tell POLITICO they are still struggling to obtain medical masks, gloves and gowns, undercutting Trump’s assertions.
For this story, reporters in the past week spoke with 17 health care workers and officials across the country, including some who responded to a POLITICO survey about working conditions on the front lines of coronavirus. Some spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution, because some hospitals have threatened to fire workers for airing their concerns publicly.
The interviews reveal a medical workforce still struggling to adapt to dangerous conditions with little confidence that the available protective gear is being steered to the places it’s needed most. Some say they’re still being forced to reuse masks or MacGyver their own equipment four months into the U.S. outbreak, even as Trump dismisses questions about shortages as “fake news,” as he did earlier this month.
“We had very little in our stockpile,” Trump said in a recent briefing. “Now we’re loaded up. And we also loaded up these hospitals.”
Without a more robust supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, the fast-moving virus will continue to pose an unprecedented threat to America’s health care workforce, having already sickened at least 9,282 medical workers and killed 27. Those grim numbers, which come from a CDC report almost two weeks ago, are certainly an undercount.
And enduring shortages of protective gear could also set back timelines for reopening parts of the country and make it more difficult for cash-starved hospitals to resume elective procedures. Trump’s own guidelines say states should have adequate supplies of protective and medical equipment before dialing back social distancing restrictions.
States and hospitals say they have faced unusual challenges in their scramble to secure PPE — from a strained global supply chain and the Trump administration itself. They complain Trump’s encouragement of states to hunt down supplies on their own has created a chaotic competition for PPE and medical equipment. In some cases, states have accused the federal government of seizing shipments of protective equipment to distribute to another region, though the Federal Emergency Management Agency has denied those claims.
Read More: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/26/trump-ppe-fake-news-207523