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[partner-box]As COVID-19 cases continue to climb, front-line health care workers are decrying unsafe working conditions — in particular, describing inadequate access to personal protective equipment, or PPE. Many hospitals and state lawmakers blame Washington, saying the Trump administration has not done enough to make this critical protective gear available.
But at a recent press conference, President Donald Trump suggested those claims are overblown, asserting instead that hospitals have the tools they need to sanitize and reuse protective facewear.
“We’re also using a sterilization process — some great equipment that will sterilize masks up to 20 times per mask. So that’s like ordering 20 times more masks. And it’s working very well,” Trump said at the April 23 briefing.
In fact, the question of reusing masks — specifically, the highly effective N95 respirators that best protect wearers from COVID-19 ― has emerged as a major worker-safety concern.
