Bay Area health care workers are growing desperate for protective medical equipment to treat a growing number of COVID-19 patients, and the situation got bad enough at one Oakland hospital this week that nurses created their own protective equipment by cutting holes in trash bags and placing them over their uniforms.

Nurses on the night shift in the telemetry unit at Highland Hospital in Oakland said they were not given protective gowns when they reported to work Sunday.

Supervisors told them they would have to wear woven, short-sleeved patient gowns, which are not designed to protect people from infectious material, putting them at risk of contracting COVID-19, said John Pearson, an emergency room nurse at Highland and president of the Alameda Health System chapter for the SEIU local 1021 union.

The nurses instead placed trash bags over their bodies, thinking they would be more effective than the patient gowns. Their actions are a troubling sign of how poorly the region’s medical professionals are equipped to handle the coronavirus outbreak, which health experts say is bound to worsen in the next two weeks due to an alarming shortage of personal protective equipment, or PPE.

California had nearly 9,600 coronavirus cases, including 2,645 in the Bay Area, as of Wednesday afternoon.

“I think we’re going to start seeing more things like that,” Pearson told The Chronicle. “We’ve already had a manager telling people to spray down their masks with cleaning fluid and re-wear them, people being told they’re only getting one mask per week or per day.

“It forces us to be in situations where we have to cut corners, often in ways that are not safe for patients,” he continued. “We are used to having to make due. But none of us want to be in a position of being a vehicle for transmitting disease.”

A spokesman for Highland Hospital said medical personnel are “working tirelessly to establish best practices and implement critical guidelines” to provide the best care amid the outbreak.

“We, along with hospitals across the country, are deeply concerned about our ability to sustain a significant surge in patients as a result of the coronavirus,” said Terry Lightfoot, spokesman for the Alameda Health System, in a statement. “For those reasons we are conserving the use of personal protective equipment and other resources consistent with CDC guidelines to ensure their availability to protect our patients and staff.”

Jim Morrissey, EMS Medical Health Operational Area Coordinator for Alameda County, said the agency recently obtained 1.5 million N-95 masks from state and federal agencies. It sent 48,000 N-95 masks, 3,000 surgical masks and nearly 500 gowns to Highland last week, Morrissey said.

“I know for a fact that we are far better off than a lot of our surrounding counties and other counties in the area that have much less available,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to support them in every way we can. If we have it, they get it.”

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Health care workers across the U.S. have been protesting in their off hours and taking to social media to call for more protective equipment. They fear a shortage of proper masks and gowns will put them at risk of contracting the illness, exacerbating the coronavirus outbreak.

“One of the biggest challenges across the board is that (emergency) staff doesn’t feel like they’re getting the full picture in terms of what the status is with equipment,” said Liz Miller, a Chicago resident whose sibling, Rebecca Gonsalves, is a doctor in the emergency room at Highland.

Miller has raised nearly $50,000 to buy Highland’s emergency room more powered, air-purifying respirators, which are filtered masks that completely cover the head and are essential for intubating patients with serious cases of COVID-19.

“There’s not a lot of transparency and not a lot of communication,” Miller said of the supply shortage. “A lot of the ER staff just feel so blind and ill-prepared. That’s a sick feeling when you’re walking into a dangerous workplace.”

Dozens of health care professionals have shared their frustrations online, posting pictures of makeshift PPE and calling on hospital administration and politicians to get them the equipment needed to protect themselves while treating patients diagnosed with the highly contagious coronavirus.

In New York, one physician tweeted that hospital staff gave her a Yankees rain poncho to use for protection.

“Our federal government has completely failed its health care workers,” she said.

On Thursday in the Bay Area, nurses at UCSF and Seton Medical Center plan to protest the lack of PPE available to health care workers on the front lines.

Meanwhile, 2,000 members of Healthcare Workers United union have signed a petition asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to increase supplies and equipment in California hospitals.

“We face the worst global health emergency in a century and healthcare workers are on the front lines,” the petition said. “Decades of underfunding and neglect of our public services have left us without the equipment, capacity, or personnel to fight this crisis.”

Newsom’s office did not reply to a request for comment Wednesday. The governor has said tens of millions of N-95 masks are on their way to California hospitals.

Officials in Daly City are scrambling to meet a critical shortage at Seton Medical Center, a 177-bed hospital designated by the state to treat COVID-19 patients. The hospital may run out of PPE in as little as five days, according to hospital staff.

“Without that equipment we face the choice of how we’re going to treat these patients,” said Debra Amour, 62, a registered nurse at Seton who is a California Nurses Association member. “Do you go into a room and then expose yourself, potentially getting sick and not being able to work to treat anybody? Or do you not go into the room? If we get sick, we’re part of the problem.”

Only 20% of the hospital’s equipment orders are being met, said San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa. The county sent 500 N-95 masks to the hospital on Tuesday, but “it may be a while” until staff receives more PPE from the state, he said.

Canepa blamed the shortage in part on President Trump’s slow response to the crisis.

“At the federal level, there’s a lack of leadership,” he said. “If there’s an issue, you have to be aggressive and you have to take extraordinary measures. We’re not seeing that.

“The people who are saving people, we need to have their back.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from a Highland Hospital spokesman and an Alameda County official. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the hospital did not respond for comment.

Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tatiana.sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez