As you read this, the US has surpassed China and Italy to become the new epicenter of the novel coronavirus as the sum of known cases soared well past 100,000, with more than 1,600 dead, pushing hospitals to their limits in virus hot spots such as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit.
Meanwhile, doctors and nurses coping with shortages resorted to extremes ranging from hiding scarce medical supplies to buying them on the black market. Recently, American healthcare workers in the trenches of the pandemic appealed for more protective gear and equipment to treat a surge in patients.
"We are scared," said Dr. Arabia Mollette of Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in New York City's Brooklyn borough. "We're trying to fight for everyone else's life, but we also fight for our lives as well, because we're also at the highest risk of exposure."
According to Reuters, doctors are especially concerned about a shortage of ventilators, machines that help patients breathe and are widely needed for those suffering from coronavirus.
Hospitals have also sounded the alarm about scarcities of drugs, oxygen tanks and trained staff.
The number of confirmed US infections rose by about 18,000 on Friday, the highest jump in a single day, to more than 103,000.
As shortages of key medical supplies abounded in US, desperate physicians and nurses were forced to take matters into their own hands. New York-area doctors say they have had to recycle some protective gear, or even resort to bootleg suppliers.
Dr. Alexander Salerno of Salerno Medical Associates in northern New Jersey described going through a "broker" to pay $17,000 for masks and other protective equipment that should have cost about $2,500, and picking them up at an abandoned warehouse.
"You don't get any names. You get just phone numbers to text," Salerno said. "And so you agree to a term. You wire the money to a bank account. They give you a time and an address to come to."
Nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York said they were locking away or hiding N-95 respirator masks, surgical masks and other supplies that are prone to pilfering if left unattended.
"Masks disappear," nurse Diana Torres said. "We hide it all in drawers in front of the nurses' station."
An emergency room doctor in Michigan, an emerging epicenter of the pandemic, said he was wearing one paper face mask for an entire shift due to a shortage and that hospitals in the Detroit area would soon run out of ventilators.
"We have hospital systems here in the Detroit area in Michigan who are getting to the end of their supply of ventilators and have to start telling families that they can't save their loved ones because they don't have enough equipment," the physician, Dr. Rob Davidson, said in a video posted on Twitter.
Hospitals around the country are expected to receive some additional aid from a $2.2 trillion emergency relief bill given final passage by Congress on Friday, after days of wrangling, and signed into law by President Donald Trump.
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