The nurses walk in and a greeter hands them a paper bag with two surgical masks in it, and that’s what you get for the day. If you don’t deal directly with patients, it’s one mask; if you work in intensive care or emergency, there are more available, often in lock-up or in a box under the nurses’ station. It’s similar all over Toronto; it’s policy, and has been for at least a week.

Every nurse knows any patient can carry the coronavirus. Every one knows some patients lie. Nurses would usually don a different mask for every room they enter, but not now. The fear and anger among nurses is palpable. Every day, they take the masks.

“You want to help your fellow nurse and you want to do your job,” said one nurse at a Toronto hospital who does not work in the ICU or the ER, but who will soon, as resources shift. “But at the same time, when you walk in and you see your entire worth as a human being is two masks in a brown paper bag — like, that’s all you’re worth to the hospital, that’s all your health is worth, is two masks for a whole shift — you’re like, what am I doing here?

“What am I (doing)? I’m risking my life, my family life, my community, and all you value me is two masks in a brown paper bag? My manager was crying: she gets one mask because she’s not doing patient care. So she’s only worth one mask.”

There are frantic efforts in government and the private sector to procure or manufacture enough personal protective equipment, or PPE, for the waves COVID-19 is expected to bring. Wuhan’s hospitals sent warnings from the future, as did Italy’s, Spain’s, Seattle’s, New York’s. One in 12 coronavirus patients in Italy was a health-care worker; it was one in eight in Spain. Doctors and nurses and health-care workers die because they are the front lines of the war, and in the United States health-care workers are already begging for adequate protection. In Canada, before the worst hits, the worry is equally acute.

It makes sense to ration equipment knowing the worst is yet to come, and not knowing exactly when or if adequate resources will arrive. Of course. And there is a global shortage, as so many nations scramble.

“Which is why we’re pulling out all the stops to get access to whatever we have; that is a process that is actively going on right now,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, in her daily briefing Sunday. “At the same time, responding to pandemic is also about handling and prioritizing your most critical and scarce resources, so hospitals on the front line are practising how they can make sure they can reduce what we call the burn rate, and not waste resources as well.”

Scarce. That means nurses — along with other hospital workers, including cleaners — are caught in the middle. COVID-19’s asymptomatic transmission makes every patient a risk, and nurses are given less protective equipment than doctors. On Thursday, Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said there was no PPE rationing in Ontario hospitals, which was plainly untrue, and had been for several days: St. Michael’s Hospital was asking nurses to use the same mask all day unless it was contaminated as of at least March 19.

Sunday, the Ontario Hospital Association and the Ontario Ministry of Health issued a joint statement about having to carefully manage supplies, which was a climbdown. A memo obtained by the Star’s Jennifer Yang indicated the provincial government expects more equipment “in the coming days and weeks”; the federal government expects significant PPE shipments soon, per one source familiar with the arrangement.

But until it’s here and tested, it’s not here. Michael Hurley, the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and a CUPE vice-president, told the Star a poll of 3,000 hospital workers Saturday asked if they had enough PPE: 87 per cent said no. The union argues the virus should be treated as if it’s airborne, citing studies, and wants anybody who comes into direct contact with symptomatic patients to have the higher-level N95 masks.

“And that was the province’s position until three weeks ago, when it wrote down the protocols on this to suit its supply problems,” said Hurley.

Shortages are everywhere. One maternity nurse outside Ontario told the Star a couple hid COVID-19-like symptoms for a week so the father could be there for the birth of the child; the nurse hadn’t been wearing a mask while treating them because of shortages, but had treated other families. She has been well since, and the mother was tested and came back negative. But it made the nurse think.

“So you get a call in from another unit: do you have any face shields?” the maternity nurse said. “And you have one box left for yourself. Do you give it to them, because they need it? Do you keep it for yourself? It’s hard.”

Nurses are also scared to talk, due to what they consider a punitive work environment: multiple nurses contacted the Star but backed out, citing job security. They have exchanged stories of a patient deliberately coughing on health-care workers and the nurses having to finish their shifts, or of crying in the driveway when they get home.

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It was already a grind: shift work, no raises in a decade, health-care cuts, a system that runs over capacity. Many have told family members they felt burned out before this began, or are ready to quit. One, who has been a nurse for over 20 years, said, “I don’t care if I never work again.” They don’t feel like heroes.

“I didn’t sign up to die on my job,” said one nurse who has worked in post-surgical care for 20 years.

“I was at the grocery store this morning and talking to a woman in line who said she was afraid to even talk to people,” said a St. Michael’s Hospital nurse who has put in over a decade in intensive care. “And she asked what I did, and I told her. And she said, you are my hero.

“And I felt like, the public perceives us to be that way, but we’re just like everybody else. We’re struggling to get through the day, and worried about what’s to come. And not sure if we’re going to have enough PPE.

“I don’t want to go to work and bring this home to my family.”

So they wait. Maybe some will quit. Maybe enough equipment will arrive, and all this goes away, and let’s hope. In the meantime, the nurses take their masks. And they don’t feel like heroes, even if they are.