Fauci thanks US health workers for sacrifices but admits PPE shortages drove up death toll

Sumary of Fauci thanks US health workers for sacrifices but admits PPE shortages drove up death toll:

• During the pandemic, even as he acknowledged that PPE shortages had contributed to the deaths of more than 3,600 of them..
• The deaths of so many health workers from Covid-19 are “a reflection of what healthcare workers have done historically, but putting themselves in harm way, by living up to the oath they take when they become physicians and nurses,”.
• The Guardian and Kaiser Health News have tracked healthcare workers deaths throughout the pandemic in the Lost on the Frontline database..
• More than 3,600 health worker deaths have been tallied in the database, which is considered the most authoritative accounting in the country..
• Personal protective equipment – including gloves, gowns and critical masks – have been in short supply since the pandemic began and heightened the toll..
• Shortages were compounded by the federal government failure to maintain a national stockpile of personal protective equipment, and the Trump administration refusal to order more domestic manufacturing of PPE..
• That left health workers to use trash bags as gowns, to reuse N95s for weeks, and at times go totally without gloves..
• The shortages led to health worker protests, who said working amid the pandemic without equipment left them like “sheep going to slaughter”..
• A year into the pandemic, gowns and gloves remain in short supply, according to the Food and Drug Administration..
• Health workers have been especially vulnerable through the pandemic, as they have treated patients through early waves when lack of personal protective equipment was especially acute, through summer surges and a disastrous peak in the winter..
• A study of health workers in the US and UK in the Lancet found health workers are three times more likely than the general public to become infected with Covid-19, with disproportionate impacts on minority health workers..
• “It very clear when you just go to the media and see the images on television – the stress and the strain on the faces of healthcare providers, nurses, doctors, other people involved in the healthcare enterprise,”.
• Members of Congress, the health and human services department (HHS) and academic reports have cited the Guardian and KHN reporting as the most comprehensive….

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From The Guardian - April 8, 2021