As states sound the alarm over a lack of ventilators to help hospitalized novel coronavirus patients -- including a plea for 30,000 machines for New York state alone -- experts warned that even if the equipment arrives, facilities could face a shortage of health care workers trained to use them.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday called on other states to send as many health care workers as they can to assist the strained system in his state. Cuomo said Tuesday that in New York state 2,710 patients were currently in the state's intensive care units and nearly 300 had to be intubated and put on ventilators.
"This will likely result in a lower quality of care, and [it's] why the standard of care changes in an emergency," said White."Critical care physicians are trained in respiratory and multi-organ failure in a way that no other specialty is." Roughly 5,800 nurses in New York state are critical-care certified, according to the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. Some 120,000 are credentialed for acute and critical care nationwide, the group said.
When a patient is intubated, they are usually given a combination of sedatives and anesthetics before a breathing tube is inserted down their throat. Patients sometimes also require paralytic drugs to loosen up their vocal cords and other muscles to prevent damage when the breathing tube is inserted.
Three of the drugs reportedly in short supply, according to Fox, are the sedative etomidate, an anesthetic ketamine and a muscle-relaxing medication called rocuronium. Several hospitals with whom ABC News spoke said they were running low on the critical medications.
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