Registered nurse Cliff Willmeng said United Hospital’s emergency room saw a large increase in the number of patients with suspected coronavirus symptoms on Monday.

The St. Paul ER had been roughly 75 percent empty as people hold off on visits under Minnesota’s stay-at-home order to help fight the pandemic’s spread. But it was near capacity to start this week, Willmeng said.

This rise underscores the effort Willmeng has been championing for weeks: nurses should be able to use hospital-issued scrubs instead of their personal scrubs.

Willmeng said the protocol of nurses being asked to personally clean their own scrubs — potentially carrying COVID-19 droplets — is a “clear workplace safety issue.”

“It’s just quite clear that the frontline personnel are having to take safety into their own hands,” Willmeng said. “… It’s protection for myself and it’s protection for my community.”

Allina Health, which runs United Hospital, declined an interview request on this subject. They issued this statement:

“Ensuring the safety of every one of our employees is Allina Health’s top priority. We understand the concern many of our health care workers face as they work to provide … the best care for patients, coupled with keeping themselves and their families safe from infection.

“Our policies and practices in relation to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including scrubs and other hospital garments, are aligned with the latest guidance available from infection prevention experts.”

Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been evolving on how to combat an illness. The CDC admits “we are still learning about how it spreads.”

CDC officials said they know COVID-19 is “spreading very easily” and began recommending face coverings to help contain the spread on Friday. When doing laundry at home for a sick person, the CDC recommended that disposable gloves be used while not shaking dirty garments and disinfecting of hampers afterward.

Willmeng said bringing personal scrubs home puts his wife, Mary, and two children, ages 11 and 9, at unnecessary risk.

“My wife is very nervous and scared,” Willmeng said. “Reasonably so, if we both get sick, where do our kids go?”

Health Systems Cooperative Laundries in St. Paul handles all laundry services for all metro area hospitals, and its manager told the Pioneer Press last week that it can handle an influx of 50 percent more garments, primarily scrubs and the reusable isolation gowns used as PPE.

Willmeng said there are racks of hospital-issued scrubs in the United Hospital ER and some staff wear them. If personal scrubs are soiled on the job, the hospital ones can be used, Willmeng said.

In revolt, Willmeng and others started wearing the hospital-issued scrubs last week. He said he has had multiple meetings with human resources personnel after “there hasn’t been a single issue since I got hired,” in October.

Even when wearing N95 face masks and gowns when an ER patient is suspected to have COVID-19, Willmeng said their lower legs and shoes are exposed.

“We are walking in and out of the rooms with this stuff all over the place,” Willmeng said. “The problem with COVID is a lot of people aren’t symptomatic. You come into an ER room that might not be symptomatic and could be presenting in all kind of different ways. You are exposed to COVID and you just don’t know it yet.”

Willmeng leads a health care worker advocacy website We Do the Work, and he included comments on this issue from three workers in his latest news release on Monday.