As the national shortage of face masks becomes severe, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nurses can use bandanas and scarves as makeshift masks when caring for COVID-19 patients — although it’s unclear whether they would protect medical workers.

The CDC says that option should be used “as a last resort” and only when the hospital nearly depletes its supply and experiences a crush of COVID-19 patients, reaching “crisis capacity.” The CDC acknowledges that its recommendations are out of step with standards of care in the United States.

[Hospitals want to kill a policy shielding nurses from COVID-19 because there aren’t enough masks]

Nurses and other health care providers can “use homemade masks (e.g., bandana, scarf) for care of patients with COVID-19,” the CDC website now reads. The agency says in the next sentence that the homemade masks’ capability to protect health care providers against the coronavirus-caused disease “is unknown.”

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