Healthcare providers that are first being hit by high Covid numbers in the fall are scrambling to build stores of personal protective equipment from scratch, according to an article on the Washington Examiner website.

“When we look at all of our data, what’s really unfortunate is that 80 percent of the facilities that have asked for supplies have no supply left of at least one of those types of PPE,” Dr. Ali Raja, co-founder of the organization Get Us PPE, which procures protective equipment for healthcare providers, said in the article.

Small hospitals and long-term care facilities across the Midwest, especially those in rural states, have not experienced an outbreak other areas saw in the spring.

Now, as infection rates in Midwestern states rise into double digits, small hospital systems now find themselves in the same predicament  New York  faced in the spring.

Healthcare workers were encountering shortages of masks, gowns, face shields and gloves throughout the summer, according to a Washington Post article.

Nurses said they are reusing N95 masks for days and weeks at a time. State officials say they have scoured U.S. and international suppliers for PPE and struggled to get orders filled. 

Read the full Washington Examiner article.