Cedar Rapids hospitals report they are quickly running out of medical supplies like face masks amid the coronavirus spread and are now pleading for community donations to replenish their stock.

“Both hospitals, all providers within the community are rapidly approaching a critical shortage of personal protective equipment,” said Dr. Tony Myers, vice president of medical affairs at Mercy Medical Center, at a press conference Thursday in Cedar Rapids.

Hospitals, both locally and nationwide, say their supplies of healthcare PPE, or personal protective equipment, are dwindling, including gloves, gowns, eye protection, and most of all, face masks.

“We, at our current rate of usage, will be out within one to two weeks,” Myers said of Mercy’s supply of PPE.

Unity Point – St. Luke’s Hospital said it doesn’t have a specific metric on how quickly its supply is being used but said it is conserving PPE and only using “what is urgently needed,” according to hospital spokesperson Sarah Corizzo.

This is even happening before Linn County has a single confirmed case of the coronavirus and before either hospital has treated a known coronavirus patient.

Myers said that’s partially because workers and patients are using more protection as a precautionary measure right now.

“So anybody that traveled out of the country, so those patients are using it, but also any staff that’s traveled out of the country is having to use it, and we’re just using more of it than we typically would,” he said.

Hospitals also received less equipment this month than they normally would because of less product coming from China.

“90% of mask supply was made in China, so when that started to slow down, we knew that we were not going to get those supplies,” Myers said.

On Thursday at a press conference in Johnston, Governor Kim Reynolds stopped short of saying there’s a shortage of PPE in Iowa, just a day after the Iowa Department of Public Health issued a request for PPE donations statewide.

“It’s a concern of every single governor across this country, the amount of PPE that we have,” Reynolds said. “We want to make sure that our healthcare providers are protected as they’re taking care of Iowans and Americans across this country.”

At Mercy, Myers said medical workers are doing things they “would’ve never considered doing before,” like reusing masks or even making their own.

He says this can be safe, if done properly, and it’s not always convenient.

“You’ve got to put it on and off appropriately, and like I said, you’ve got to maintain it. You don’t want to set it on a surface that’s not clean, and so all of that, you have to do that very well,” Myers said of the process for reusing masks.

He added that both Mercy and St. Luke’s, along with Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa and Surgery Center Cedar Rapids, are conserving supplies by postposing all elective surgeries for the time being, which was announced Tuesday, and encouraging people to limit non-urgent doctor’s appointments by utilizing video visits and telemedicine instead.

Anyone who has healthcare PPE to donate can do so by contacting their county public health department or emergency management agency.

In Linn County, people can donate by calling the Linn County EMA at 319-892-6500.