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They’re manning the trenches in an increasingly difficult struggle to fend off the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Canada’s emergency-department doctors are often left in the dark about how exactly to confront the challenge, receiving conflicting advice from government and hospital employers, some of them warned Sunday.

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One emergency physician has just published a starkly worded opinion piece about what he called the “void in communication” over how health care workers in Ontario should protect themselves and their patients.

A spokesman for the emergency doctors’ national group says it’s a problem across the country — a “desultory and tentative” approach by government that leaves health workers and hospitals largely on their own.

“They’ve seriously let us down,” said Dr. Alan Drummond of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. “We are getting mixed messaging with regards to screening, we have had decidedly mixed messaging with respect to what’s required for personal-protective equipment … There is confusion at the ground level with all of these things.”