NewYork-Presbyterian emergency department sign. | Cindy Ord/Getty Images As supplies grow scarce in New York City, medical workers fear becoming patients themselves

NEW YORK — Medical workers on the front lines of New York City's growing coronavirus emergency are sounding the alarm that without more equipment and stricter protocols they’ll soon be the ones in need of treatment.

The city is now the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S., with 12,339 residents infected and about 17 percent of those cases hospitalized as of Monday morning. The number of hospitalizations is expected to peak within the next 40 days, though hospitals are already down to their last weeks of personal protective equipment to keep medical professionals from contracting the infectious disease.


Medical professionals who spoke with POLITICO asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, and in some cases, to avoid getting caught breaking non-disclosure agreements.

“Doctors are going in [to Covid-19 units] without washing their hands properly, going in without gloves,” a staffer at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue said. “Doctors are becoming patients at every hospital system in New York City.”

The shortage of personal protective equipment, or PPE, has forced workers to reuse single-use masks and wipe down face shields with bleach wipes — supplies that are also running low at even the best-appointed hospitals, according to staffers across the city’s health systems.

“It is really, really bad. I showed up to work last night, and for each nurse you get a brown bag with one face shield and one N95 mask,” said a nurse at Mount Sinai. “There’s bins to recycle the masks. We will soon be running out.”

With the lack of equipment, frontline medical staff risk being exposed to the virus, which could put them in the hospital or keep them home for weeks as they recover — further crushing hospitals with staff shortages.

Three nurses who spoke with POLITICO said they’re working anywhere from 12- to 15-hour shifts for three to five consecutive days. While overtime is not mandatory, they expect either the state or their hospitals will begin implementing that policy soon.

“With an influx of patients coming in, it’s only going to get worse,” said the Mount Sinai nurse. “We still don’t have enough manpower.”

At Mount Sinai South Nassau, one staffer said the Long Island hospital has not done deep cleaning in communal areas, like break rooms, where medical professionals sit “shoulder to shoulder.”

“I’m confused about why the hospital is working this way,” she said. “They’re going to inundate themselves with their own staffers.”

NewYork-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai and NYC Health + Hospitals — the city's public hospital system — are not broadly testing their staff for Covid-19 despite concerns from employees that they will infect their families when they return home from a shift or work alongside a colleague who has the virus, they said.

“Hospital staff are being exposed to potential Covid-19-infected patients and being officially told to continue to work while they have no symptoms themselves, even when we know it is very possible to spread the virus without having symptoms,” said a health care professional employed at NYC Health + Hospitals. “They have made this policy because we are short-staffed at baseline.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio are attempting to address the statewide staffing and supply shortage by calling on retired health care workers to join a medical reserve and pressing the federal government for equipment.

“I am contacting all the retired nurses, all retired doctors. I am asking medical schools to make their staff available; nursing schools to make their staff available,” Cuomo said at a press conference at the Javits Center this afternoon, where the Federal Emergency Management Agency has started to build a 1,000-bed temporary hospital. “We’re also contacting all registered health care professionals across the state — over 600,000 — to ask them to be ready to come in as a reserve staff.”

Cheryl Wischhover, a beauty and wellness reporter who worked as a nurse practitioner at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center until 2009, received an email from the governor’s team asking her to temporarily supplement the state’s health care workforce .

“Technology, medicines and protocols have changed a lot in the last decade,” she said in an interview. “All that makes me not the best person to be on the front lines.”

The former pediatric nurse practitioner said she is still considering the request, though she would be more comfortable swabbing noses in a hospital tent than working in facilities with adult patients hooked up to ventilators.

“I’m in my late 40s. Of course I’m terrified,” she said. “Can I take care of other patients and free up nurses?”

Hospital personnel are also being thrown into situations one staffer described as “uncomfortable,” such as treating Covid-19 patients with little to no training in treating its effects.

“So far they’re trying to have people shadow in these critical care issues,” said a staffer at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “It’s going to be something that they have to learn on the go.”

Five medical professionals said the mental health toll is starting to show among health workers.

“This will be the most catastrophic event that has happened in our lifetime so far,” said the staffer at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. “There’s a sense of desperation and panic and abyss in my colleagues’ eyes that I’ve never witnessed.”

The Mount Sinai South Nassau staffer added: “It’s been a whirlwind of emotion in a pressure cooker situation and most of us just want to cry all the time but we’re afraid if we start we might not stop.”