SALT LAKE CITY — At a Santa Rosa, California, hospital, supplies have gotten so low that health care workers are reusing their face masks, sometimes for multiple days. Hospital workers in Renton, Washington, are creating DIY face masks out of bandanas and supplies bought from crafts stores. A health care center in St. Paul, Minnesota, may shut down altogether because of a lack of protective gear for hospital staff.
“It’s a war,” President Donald Trump recently declared, in reference to the soaring numbers of cases of the coronavirus across the country. And it’s starting to look more and more like one: as patient beds run low in Seattle, a suburban soccer field is being converted into an outdoor health care center, evoking images of wartime field hospitals.
If America is at war with the coronavirus, then health care workers are the soldiers on the front lines, putting their lives at risk to protect the public. But when doctors and nurses head into battle, many are being forced to do so without armor.
“The supply shortages are putting health care workers at risk,” said a cardiologist in Seattle, who spoke to the Deseret News on the condition of anonymity. (Many of the health care workers in this story declined to be identified, some fearing retribution from their employers.)
For some, the risk has already become reality. Two emergency room doctors — one in Washington state and the other in New Jersey — have been hospitalized in critical condition, and dozens of other health care workers across the United States have already contracted the virus. Overseas, the problem is worse: nearly 3,400 Chinese health care workers have already fallen ill, and 13 have died.
But it’s more than just the physical safety of hospital staff at stake, but their mental health too. Some doctors told the Deseret News they go to work wracked with anxiety, and return home to empty guest bedrooms, where they sleep alone for fear of infecting their family members.
‘There’s absolutely no way to protect myself’
One of the reasons for the shortage of face masks has to do with international trade. China — which made half the world’s masks before the virus emerged there — has claimed mask factory output for itself and has only just started to share with other countries, The New York Times reported.
That problem was compounded when healthy individuals began panic-buying face masks, rather than saving them for medical professionals. Now, hospitals have been imploring people with stashes of face masks to drop them off at hospitals so health care workers can use them.
“There’s absolutely no way to protect myself,” said Dr. Faezah A. Bux, an anesthesiologist in central Kentucky told The New York Times. “Not only can I not protect myself, I can’t protect my patients.”
On Friday, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act in order to get medical supplies on the front lines for the coronavirus outbreak. It’s a law that dates back to the Korean War that allows presidents to compel the private sector to ramp up production of equipment needed for national security.
Trump said Friday the law would be used “for certain things that we need,” including “ventilators” and “probably more masks, to a large extent.”
But some doctors say that the most troubling shortage of all isn’t face masks, but COVID-19 test kits. The cardiologist in Seattle says the majority of the patients he sees are in the highest risk group, as many of them are older patients and have preexisting medical conditions that make them vulnerable to the virus. Because of the shortage of the coronavirus test kits, it is very difficult for his patients to get tested.
What’s more, he and other doctors who are frequently in the emergency room cannot themselves get tested easily or frequently for the virus, and are therefore at high risk of carrying the virus from patient to patient, or from work to home, where their spouses and children may become infected.
“If you can’t test patients and you don’t know whether they have it or not, and you can’t test doctors and health care workers, I think that puts everybody at risk,” he said.
While the number of cases in Utah remains small compared to other states — 257 with one death reported — hospitals are already experiencing supply shortages and are telling most patients not to seek testing due to lack of available test kits.
“We … would like the ability of testing statewide for whomever is showing symptoms, but that’s just not the case right now,” state epidemiologist Angela Dunn said in a news briefing last week. “We have limited supplies to run the test and we have limited personal protective equipment for providers.”
It’s only a matter of time before the problem gets worse, a Salt Lake City emergency room doctor told the Deseret News.
“I think we’re extremely well prepared in terms of setting up tents and having a separate coronavirus unit separate from the rest of the hospital,” the worker said. “But I think it’s going to get worse. I just don’t know how much worse.”
‘I needed to know that no matter what it’s going to be OK’
In addition to supply shortages and concerns about physical health, being on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic is taking an emotional toll on some doctors.
Helena, a 22-year-old emergency room technician in New Orleans, spoke to the Deseret News as she was heading home from her third 12-hour shift in four days. She said she normally works only a few shifts a week, balancing work with school. But when the virus began spreading, her classes were canceled, and she decided to pick up extra shifts at the hospital.
As an emergency room tech, her job involves a high level of exposure to sick patient’s bodily fluids, including changing catheters and helping patients go to the bathroom.
When she comes home from work, she does what she calls her “decontamination routine”: she lets herself in the backdoor of the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, and immediately strips off her scrubs and shoes and throws them into the washer. Then she steps into a steaming hot shower and scrubs herself from head to toe with hard soap. Then she goes to bed — alone. She sleeps in a separate room from her boyfriend, in their apartment’s guest bedroom, to try to prevent giving him the virus. And because she can’t get tested, she has no idea if she has it.
“I kind of feel like I’m walking around with this thick layer of green slime all over me. It’s really hard knowing you have to distance yourself from everybody you love for their own safety.” — Helena, a New Orleans ER technician
“I consider myself a carrier, even though I’m not showing any symptoms yet,” she said. “I kind of feel like I’m walking around with this thick layer of green slime all over me. It’s really hard knowing you have to distance yourself from everybody you love for their own safety.”
In addition to being away from her boyfriend, she is also unable to visit her mother, who lives with her elderly grandmother. Without her family or her boyfriend, she feels isolated, her nerves even more on edge.
“Sometimes when I’m getting ready for a shift I’ll get really freaked out,” she said. “I called my mom before my shift yesterday, I just had to talk to her. I needed to know that no matter what it’s going to be OK. Even if she doesn’t know if that’s true.”
Helena says despite her fear, she feels she has a duty to serve the public in a time of crisis — a drive inspired by her parents, who worked as paramedics, and her own service in the military.
“If I give into my fear and just decide not to show up to work, then what’s stopping everyone else from doing it?” she said. “This is exactly what we signed up for when we decided to go into medicine and here it is. That’s just the job.”