Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist was so desperate to get needed protective gowns for the veterans nursing home hit by coronavirus in Lebanon that he found himself standing in the paint section of a Home Depot store.

He was looking for anything that would substitute for the gowns, he said, after he concluded he couldn’t rely on the state to resupply the Edward C. Allworth Veterans’ Home.

On Saturday, the number of COVID-19 cases at the nursing home rose by one to nine, the most tied to one place in Oregon and the only ones identified so far at a center for the elderly in the state.

Nyquist has helped coordinate the response to the outbreak at the home, a 6-year-old complex of four stand-alone buildings that serve a total of 151 people. Two men who live there, both in their 80s, tested positive Wednesday with no known exposure, and six more men tested positive Thursday.

It took a day of scrambling that included calls to the local hospital and the fire department to scrounge up a stop-gap cache of gowns. The Oregon Health Authority arranged to send the home 1,000 gowns about an hour after being contacted by an Oregonian/OregonLive reporter and after the agency said it got a request from the veterans home.

As Nyquist and fellow Commissioner Will Tucker described it, the county was left to fend for itself. But the Oregon Health Authority said it has been in constant contact with the veterans home and arranged to provide the equipment that was requested.

The supply chain and communication troubles highlight a struggle not only in Oregon but nationwide to find and distribute medical equipment – from respirator masks to gowns to ventilators – to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control acknowledges the problem and makes recommendations for alternatives in some situations.

The equipment is critical to protect workers from a disease tied to close contact and droplets sprayed by coughing and sneezing patients. And there are few places worse than a nursing home for the new coronavirus to spread. About two dozen people associated with the Life Care nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, died from the infections, accounting for the bulk of the coronavirus deaths in the United States.

The protective gear is especially important at the Lebanon veterans home, with about 225 workers. They are caring for infected residents on site. The patients are eight male veterans and one woman, a veteran’s wife. They all are isolated in their rooms in two separate buildings in the complex.

On Friday, Linn County officials got on a phone call with representatives from the Oregon Health Authority and others that Nyquist said profoundly worried him.

A representative from the nursing home said its gown supply was dangerously low and might not last through the weekend, Nyquist said. A state employee on the call said the agency didn’t have gowns to send but would try to track some down, according to Nyquist and a Linn County health administrator.

The health authority had a different take on the conversation.

The state agency didn’t get a formal request from the commissioners during that call or later in the day, a spokeswoman said in a statement. The state Department of Veterans’ Affairs declined comment on the call.

Still, the uncertainty led Nyquist to the Home Depot in Albany late Friday, but he didn’t find anything that would work.

Nyquist and Tucker remained undeterred.

“We’ve staved off this crisis by begging, borrowing and stealing everything we can,” Tucker said.

By about 1 p.m. Saturday, Tucker managed to get 200 extra gowns from the Lebanon Fire Department and Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital.

That averted the immediate crisis, Tucker said. He turned to a more long-term solution -- ordering cloth gowns that a contractor would wash on a regular basis.

At 1:30 p.m., The Oregonian/OregonLive sent an email to the Oregon Health Authority asking about the circumstances described by the commissioners.

About 2 p.m., the veterans home asked the health authority for 1,000 gowns, said a state agency spokeswoman, Jamie Bash. Earlier in the morning, the veterans home had said it needed equipment, but didn’t say how much.

About 2:30 p.m., the health authority arranged to have the gowns delivered Sunday morning. That’s around the time when Todd Noble, the county’s healthy director, said he got a call from the health authority to make a formal request for the gowns “for tracking purposes.”

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Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen said that there was never any doubt that the veterans home would get the gowns it needs.

“They requested gowns, and we’re shipping those out first thing in the morning,” Allen said.

Nyquist was surprised by Allen’s comment.

“Why would we be turning over every rock to find gowns if the Oregon Health Authority had conveyed to anybody that they already had this handled?” he asked.

Still, he said, “We’re happy it’s resolved now.”

Kelly Fitzpatrick, director of the state Veterans’ Affairs Department, said she’s grateful for local and state efforts to get the nursing home the equipment.

“Their support for our staff and honored veterans has been unwavering,” Fitzpatrick said.

While state and county leaders might disagree on the degree of the gown emergency, they agree that not enough personal protective equipment exists to meet what will likely be a substantial demand if the outbreak continues to spread in Oregon and across the U.S.

Oregon has announced 36 presumptive or confirmed cases of coronavirus in 11 counties. The state also had its first death from COVID-19, a previously identified case in Multnomah County. The man, 70, died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Portland. He wasn’t connected to the cases in the Lebanon veterans home. He had underlying health conditions and tested positive for the disease Tuesday.

The federal government has approved just a fraction of the equipment Oregon has requested, Allen said, and there are many hospitals and nursing homes besides the veterans home that need supplies.

That means the health authority must evaluate requests to make sure all health care facilities get enough to last at least two weeks, he said.

“That results in people not getting what they ask for,” Allen said. “And this facility is not the only one like that.”

The even bigger issue, though, is that the situation at the veterans home could be only the beginning.

“This is a huge problem,” Allen said. “We’ll all do the best we can.”

-- Fedor Zarkhin

fzarkhin@oregonian.com

desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin

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