‘Doctors will strike if no coronavirus PPE’

This 7 April 2020 video from New York City in the USA says about itself:

Reporter Gives Desperate Nurse His Protective Mask

CBS reporter David Begnaud was at an intensive care unit in Brooklyn reporting on the coronavirus outbreak, and he was geared up with personal protective equipment. When he interviewed a nurse who was wearing a garbage bag, she pleaded for his mask and gown and he gave it to her, after it was sanitized. The death toll from the virus is expected to spike in the coming week, and while the President keeps promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine, Dr. Anthony Fauci says there is little evidence it works.

Translated from Dutch NOS radio today:

Call to doctors: stop working if there is no personal protective equipment

Dutch doctors’ association KNMG does not want doctors and other care providers to do their work without the right protective equipment. There is currently, eg, a scarcity of mouth masks. As a result, the risks of infection with the coronavirus are now too big, the federation says.

“An infection can also pose significant risks to healthy people. Rescuers who are infected with covid-19 themselves are also potentially at risk of death or damage if the disease were to develop severely,” said a statement by the KNMG. “In addition, they run the risk of becoming unavailable for a long time due to illness, and they increase the chance that other patients in the healthcare sector will become infected.” The latter endangers the continuity of care, say the doctors.

“This means that care providers may only be asked for direct care of patients with (presumably) covid-19 if they are provided with adequate personal protective equipment. What is considered ‘adequate’ is determined by the guidelines of the health authority RIVM.”

The organization suspects that in situations of extreme emergency, doctors will decide to provide care, even if they do not have enough protective equipment. But with that they have to be “very reserved”, says the KNMG.

This 10 April 2020 photo shows Dutch healthcare workers demonstrating in Rotterdam for PPE.