California is fighting to supply hospitals with needed personal protective equipment, or PPE. Fierce competition and a lack of central coordination is hampering efforts.
Dr. Frank Candela, chief of staff at West Hills Hospital in the San Fernando Valley, started a GoFundMe last week to raise money for more safety gear at his medical center, where masks and face shields are running short as coronavirus cases mount.“We’ve been walking around waving money and there isn’t anybody who has supply right now,” Candela said, calling it “such a difficult situation.”
After Long Beach-based Virgin Orbit reached out to the state last week, California officials connected the rocket maker with academics who had designs for a simple ventilator that could work for some patients. A Virgin spokesman said Wednesday that the company had already started producing and testing them and was waiting for federal Food and Drug Administration approval before ramping production up to hundreds or even thousands of units a week.
Ferguson added: “We are sending things out the door as fast as we can get them in order to meet the needs at the local level.” Mike Callagy, San Mateo County manager, said the county had asked the state Emergency Medical Services Authority for the personal protective equipment, “and they simply do not have them.... The state really needs to push on the feds to get those supplies in so they can be distributed down through the system that’s in place here.”
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