Intensive care unit nurses at a Poughkeepsie, N.Y., hospital charge the facility is reusing N-95 masks, after used PPE was found strung on a clothes line in a storage closet.
The nurses compiled a video that depicted dozens of the masks, which provide the best protection against COVID-19, in a storage closet at Vassar Brothers Medical Center and gave it to News12. A photo was also given to Mid Hudson News.
One nurse alleged she got what was supposed to be a new mask with makeup stains on it, News12 reported.
"All those masks were there to be packed away and saved," VBMC president Peter Kelly told News12 on Thursday, adding the hospital and others around the country have saved masks to be sanitized and reused only if there's another national shortage of personal protective equipment.
"One of the things that we were doing was drying them before we packaged them away and we have never had to use them," Kelly said.
VBMC officials maintain it has a three-month supply of PPE, as required by New York state officials.
“We have never used recycled masks at Vassar Brothers Medical Center,” hospital spokesman John Nelson told Mid Hudson News.
“I’m told if the photo was taken here, it would have been at a time, early in the pandemic, when there was a national shortage of masks and other personal protective equipment. We were preparing for a possible worst-case scenario, which would have included properly sterilizing and reusing masks.”
Nelson insisted all masks worn by hospital staff are new.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously released its own set of recommendations for reusing the respirator masks, writing that there was no way of determining the maximum possible number of safe reuses for N95 masks.
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