Increasingly desperate pleas from health care workers and public authorities for donations of face masks and other protective gear are an unsettling sign of just how unprepared American hospitals are for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Across California, dozens more health care workers have been ordered home because of possible contagion in response to more than 80 confirmed cases as of Sunday afternoon. In Kirkland, Washington, more than a quarter of the city’s fire department was quarantined after exposure to a handful of infected patients at the Life Care Center nursing home.
