As an expected surge of COVID-19 patients approaches, hospitals in the Portland area continue their desperate attempts to secure more personal protective equipment for its employees.

Those caregivers got a boost Tuesday from an unexpected source: Sportswear giant Nike.

Nike executives revealed Tuesday that the company is working with Oregon Health & Science University to develop face shields and perhaps other safety gear that will give health care workers some protection from the highly contagious virus.

Nike’s innovation and manufacturing teams are “exploring designs for PPE to support doctors and nurses and others on the front line of this outbreak,” Nike CEO John Donahoe said. “We know that this is a moment in society where the private sector has a major role to play. Companies like Nike need to do our part.”

“OHSU is extremely grateful to the team at Nike for their generous offer to help OHSU in our coordination with other health systems during this unprecedented time,” OHSU said in prepared statement. “We are committed to ongoing discussions regarding their efforts to develop prototype face shields to help ensure the safety and well-being of health care professionals.”

Little else is known about the effort. OHSU officials deferred to Nike. Nike declined comment beyond the remarks from Donahoe, which came after the company announced its third-quarter earnings.

Just about every hospital and health system in the Portland area is scrambling to obtain additional supplies of PPE. The shortage developed in part because many of the Chinese factories that make them shut down after COVID-19 breakouts.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The worst-case scenario is that COVID-19 victims will overwhelm local hospitals, in part because doctors and nurses contract the virus because they lack the proper safety gear. The Oregon Medical Association on Monday told members of a joint Legislative committee on COVID-19 that an adequate supply of safety equipment is vital.

“We need an all-hands-on-deck and practical approach to working with the appropriate Federal and State authorities to ensure that our providers have needed personal protective equipment and devices,” the group said in a statement. "Currently, many ER physicians and other clinicians are being asked to reuse the same equipment throughout an entire shift, or to conserve the very limited supplies in some cases. This is a significant risk and we must do all we can to protect our healthcare workforce.

In response to that concern, donors big and small have offered their time, money and expertise. Multinational corporations like Nike, alongside grassroots efforts from local sewing clubs, have lined up to help.

On Tuesday, retired businesswoman and philanthropist Nancy Lematta donated $2 million to Providence Health Systems, which will help finance PPE and other hospital equipment.

Lematta, the 82-year-old widow of the Columbia Helicopters founder Wes Lematta, said the only thing remotely similar to COVID-19 that she’s ever seen was the polio scare that swept the nation in the early 1950s.

The PPE shortage has become a heated issue among management and frontline hospital workers.

Privately, doctors and nurses wonder how the ranks of senior managers at these multi-billion-dollar health systems could have failed to stock up when it became clear that the coronavirus posed a deadly threat. They also resent hospitals’ demands that they conserve and reuse masks and other safety gear, some of which is intended for one use.

Some area health systems claim they have enough PPE for the time being. That's the case at Legacy Health, the $2.2 billion-a-year nonprofit that operates Good Samaritan hospital in Northwest Portland and Emanuel Hospital in North Portland.

“We’re in fine shape right now,” Legacy spokesman Brian Terrett said.

Internally, the message is not quite so cheery. In a memo obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive, Lewis Low, Legacy’s chief medical officer, said “the shortage is real” and that the organization will rely in part on its employees to remedy the problem.

“There is no doubt you have heard stories from our colleagues or read national headlines about hospital staff in Seattle and other cities concerned for a future where they battle COVID-19 with bandanas and parts from Home Depot,” Low wrote. Legacy has a “strong plan in place to keep you safe -- but we need your help.”

Low said Legacy employees are using too much protective equipment and said they must cut back.

“It is important to remember that a misused mask worn today means a clinician tomorrow may be without when they need it most,” Low said in the memo.

Legacy is asking its workers turn in any excess safety equipment they have put aside to a central repository. In particular, Legacy needs masks, gowns, face shields, hand sanitizer, wipes, and lab testing supplies such as swabs.

At OHSU, nurses are celebrating the unexpected delivery of hundreds of so-called P-1000 respirators to staff in the OHSU emergency department. The rank and file did not know that OHSU had stashed the respirators in a warehouse.

The last couple days have been difficult ones at OHSU emergency department as a relatively large number of patients with respiratory symptoms consistent with COVID-19 arrived for treatment. Some nurses were exhausted after working 16-hour days.

But the delivery of the P100 face masks offered some good news.

Dr. James Heilman, who works in the emergency department, said he hopes the new masks will ease the tension over PPE. “Obviously, it’s been a very hot topic internally and out in the community,” he said.

Jeff Manning

971-263-5164

jmanning@oregonian.com