Recently Dr. Alister Martin faced his patient, a Hispanic man who spoke no English, and broke the news that he would have to be intubated. Struggling to keep his voice calm, Dr. Martin, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, suggested that the man call his wife. And he told the patient, a bus driver and a father of three, that he should give her his love and say goodbye, just in case.

This exchange is now part of the fabric of Dr. Martin’s daily routine, but it never gets easier. Making it all the more difficult is that each piece of information is repeated at least twice: Most of Dr. Martin’s Covid-19 patients don’t speak English, so he communicates through a language interpreter on the phone.

Because personal protective equipment is in short supply in hospitals across the country, few clinical interpreters are able to work in person with Covid-19 patients, as they normally would. Most language interpretation is done remotely. Communicating through an interpreter doubles or triples the length of a medical exchange, adding new confusion and anxiety to situations that are already stressful for patients and their families. And the conditions of Covid-19 care — the rapid pace at which cases evolve, the desire of hospital workers to limit the duration of their exposure to patients — create numerous obstacles to effective interpretation.

“We are seeing an overall degradation in the quality of care given to patients who don’t speak English as their first language,” Dr. Martin said.