An opinion piece in the Annals of Internal Medicine argued that all healthcare workers in hospitals who have to deal with patients who either have coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) or could have the disease should be equipped with N95 respirators, according to an article on the Infection Control Today website.
There are problems with the guidelines, according to the author of the opinion piece. The CDC guidelines, say that N95 is preferred, but then they say [surgical and medical masks are] acceptable if there is a shortage.
Allowing surgical masks and medical masks to be used in circumstances where N95s should be used detracts from the effort to supply enough N95s, the article said.
As long as the guideline writers say that they other options to N95s, there won’t be a focused effort to make the N95s.
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