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The Open Cities Community Health Center in St. Paul, Minn., is considering shutting its doors, because of a dwindling supply of face masks. Doctors at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis have been forced to perform invasive procedures with loose fitting surgical masks rather than the tight respirator masks recommended by health agencies. At one Los Angeles emergency room, doctors examining a suspected coronavirus patient were given a box of expired masks. When they tried to secure them to their faces, the elastic bands snapped. (Jacobs, Richtel and Baker, 3/19)

An intensive-care nurse in Illinois was told to make a single-use mask last for five days. An emergency room doctor in California said her colleagues had started storing dirty masks in plastic containers to use again later with different patients. A pediatrician in Washington State, trying to make her small stock last, has been spraying each mask with alcohol after use, until it breaks down. (Padilla, 3/19)

Emergency room physician John Gavin can’t identify the exact patient from whom he contracted the coronavirus, but he’s confident he picked up the illness working one of his 12-hour shifts in Amite, Louisiana’s small, rural emergency room. “There were just so many people who had so many vague symptoms that any of them could have been that person,” he said. “We see a lot of viral-type illnesses.” But Gavin, 69, is certain that before his coronavirus diagnosis on March 9, officials at Hood Memorial Hospital, where he works, hadn’t made any specific changes to protocols or procedures to protect doctors and nurses from contracting the disease. (Sanders, Miller, Churchill and Armstrong, 3/19)

Doctors in Seattle have been reduced to making their own face masks out of sheets of plastic, after a global shortage of medical protective gear has hit Washington state, an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Ahead of an anticipated shortage of medical supplies, hospital staff met in a conference room south of Seattle to make homemade masks for the doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals on the frontline of tackling the coronavirus outbreak. (Bloom, 3/19)

One Seattle-area hospital system has set up its own makeshift assembly line — using parts purchased from Home Depot and craft stores — to create protective face shields for workers. Boston nurses are gathering racquetball glasses to use in place of safety goggles. In New York, a dialysis center is preparing to use bandannas in place of masks as protection against the novel coronavirus. Just 11 weeks into a pandemic crisis expected to last months, the nightmare of medical equipment shortages is no longer theoretical. Health-care workers, already uneasy about their risk of infection amid reports of colleagues getting sick and new data showing even relatively young people may become seriously ill, are frustrated and fearful. (Eunjung Cha, Miller, Rowland and Sun, 3/19)

Doctors reusing masks between patients. Nurses going to work, even if they've been exposed to the novel coronavirus, to meet demand. And if their supplies run out -- staff having to replace face masks with bandanas or scarves. That is what hospitals in the United States, facing a surge of coronavirus patients, could look like as the pandemic worsens, according to contingency plans released by US health officials. (Azad and Nedelman, 3/19)

Kaiser Health News: Mask Shortage Straps Pharmacists Who Need Them To Keep Medicines Pure

Pharmacy staff who prepare IV drugs inside hospitals are the latest health care workers decrying a shortage of masks as they scramble to prepare medications for patients with everything from cancer to COVID-19. The staffers wear surgical masks while preparing liquid medications injected into patients’ veins to avoid breathing any droplets of saliva into the formulas, a crucial step in ensuring the medication remains sterile. (Jewett and Lupkin, 3/20)

The number of patients possibly infected with coronavirus continues to rise in Massachusetts hospitals, while staff agonize over a more immediate crisis: a lack of protective gear to keep them safe from this highly contagious disease. In a matter of days, hospital workers have gone from worrying about shortages to rationing, and fearing that they actually could run out of supplies. (McCluskey and Kowalczyk, 3/19)

Four trade groups that represent biotechs, medical device firms, and hospitals in Massachusetts have requested that members donate emergency supplies - everything from face masks to diagnostic equipment — to help the state fight COVID-19. “It’s incumbent upon all of us to do everything we can to address the COVID-19 pandemic and aid the first responders and healthcare providers who are putting their health on the line every day to help patients,” said a letter to members of the trade groups late Wednesday. (Saltzman, 3/19)