 “I feel like we are being experimented on…I started wheezing, coughing, I had shortness of breath, and chest tightness.” That was Erica Jones, RN, talking about nurses at MedStar Washington Hospital Center being forced to re-use N95 masks. She spoke at a press conference outside the hospital Thursday morning, organized by National Nurses United, which warned that “decontaminating” and reusing N95 filtering facepiece respirators is unsafe. “I don’t understand why Washington Hospital is not doing everything it can to get us the PPE we need,” said Stephanie Sims, a registered nurse in WHC’s neonatal intensive care unit. “We are being asked to risk our well-being, and the well-being of our communities when it is not necessary.” In addition, nurses say the hospital is not offering nurses testing unless they’re showing symptoms of illness. They’re calling on the hospital to offer testing to any health care worker who is asking for a test, pointing to studies that indicate peak infectiousness with COVID-19 occurs during the pre-symptomatic phase. Read more here.
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