While frontline healthcare workers fighting the US coronavirus outbreak continue to struggle with what they’ve called a dramatic lack of preparedness, ever-shifting guidelines on treatment are raising concerns that America’s response is dangerously inconsistent. Nurses working amid this outbreak – which continues to see increasing numbers of diagnoses and deaths – maintain that the guidelines keep shifting due to fluid federal mandates and continued staffing and supply shortages. “It’s not just coronavirus, but a virus that can spread through contact as well as through droplets,” Pratt said. Initially, federal guidance said that nurses caring for a coronavirus patient could only deal with that patient; now, nurses are permitted to work with other patients, Pratt said. Further, Santini said uncertainty about coronavirus trickles down to the public which, in turn, impacts medical facilities.

Source: The Guardian March 10, 2020 09:22 UTC