A group of health professionals held a press conference Tuesday to call out the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors for choosing to apply for a state waiver to further lift COVID-19 restrictions, saying basic health safety protocols are not yet being evenly applied.
Front-line workers around the Bay Area are still working in hazardous conditions without adequate protective personal equipment (PPE), and specifically N95 medical respirators, said H-PEACE (Health Professionals for Equality and Community Empowerment), a group of doctors and nurses throughout the Bay Area.
"Current PPE issues in Sonoma County should cause leaders to pause," said Jennifer Herman, a family nurse practitioner. "We're in Stage 2, which means we ought to have met Stage 1. We think that an important step has been skipped."
That step was ensuring that all essential workers are provided with adequate safety gear on a regular basis. But now the definition of "adequate" seems to be in question. H-PEACE says medical centers are using recently downgraded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that allows hospitals to provide surgical masks instead of more protective N95 respirators based on scarcity conditions.
"How can we justify using metrics of scarcity, especially when our hospitalization rates are so low?" Dr. Jennifer Fish said.
The group called on the county to create a front-line worker task force that officials would consult before making major decisions regarding public health mid-pandemic.
— Julia Scott (@juliascribe)