国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Many U.S. healthcare workers face COVID-19 safety challenges_时事

国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Many U.S. healthcare workers face COVID-19 safety challenges

"But patients with COVID-19 came right through our lobby to get to the COVID floor," Nurse C told Xinhua. "That kind of incompetence and misinformation could kill people."

Worse still, at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, a group of nurses requested proper N95 masks from the management to protect them from the coronavirus and refused to go on the COVID floor without them.

"Management didn't even listen to their concerns," Nurse D told Xinhua. "They just suspended them all in the middle of the crisis."

This led to an impromptu protest outside the hospital two weeks ago by concerned nurses who had not expected the management to deliberately put them in harm's way. Upset and fearing for their lives, the protestors demanded better PPE and that their suspended colleagues be allowed back to work.

"It was definitely a punitive action by the administration to suspend those nurses, who were only requesting the minimum standard protections against this deadly disease," Nurse D told Xinhua.

Nurse D also revealed that the outbreak is taking a deep emotional toll on nurses and doctors who haven't been able to go home to their families in weeks out of fear they might bring the disease home with them.

Unlike most people who are sheltering-in-place with their families, nurses have been forced by circumstances to stay in hotels in strict isolation from their loved ones.