Opinion: Health care workers don unnecessary protective gear. The CDC and WHO need to update their PPE guidance
Every time we enter a Covid patient’s room, we first don gloves, and a disposable gown. When we come out of the room, we remove that gear and put it in one of the many bulging disposal bags lining the halls of our hospital. We go through the same process for the next patient, as do health care workers across the country and around the world. It would not be uncommon for this to happen 30 times a day for each patient as nurses, physicians, aids, and others provide care.
Multiply our actions by the thousands of health care workers who see patients every day, and the nearly 800 days since Covid-19 was declared a public health emergency in the U.S. and around the world, and the scope of the disposal problem becomes huge.
