Uncertainty remains about N95 supply
Spot shortages difficult to understand
Will there be enough N95 filtering facepiece respirators to protect health care workers from the novel H1N1 virus?
That question has been at the heart of policy debate over guidance for respirator use in hospitals, but the answer is somewhat difficult to nail down.
A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said he was "unaware of" any shortages of respirators. Hospitals have reported spot shortages, and some hospitals have asked employees to reuse respirators to preserve the supply of N95s. Other hospitals, even in the same region, did not report a shortage.
"It's hard for me to understand - in a market where the big distributors are national - that there could be spot shortages," says Daniel Shipp, president of the International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) in Arlington, VA. "If there are spot shortages, are they lasting? Do the distributors try to get product to that area where there's greater demand? The product ought to be able to get to where the need is."
Shipp suggests that the federal government and health care employers increase their stockpiles. Health care employers also need clear and specific guidance about when respirators are needed and who should wear them, he says.
The federal government also could encourage more domestic manufacture of disposable respirators, much as it influenced an increase in manufacture of the influenza vaccine, he says.
"There are so many uncertainties. The one thing we believe is a constant is that NIOSH-approved respirators are designed to filter out particles and it doesn't matter whether it's H1N1, or H5N1, or some other mutation of the flu," he says. "It's not like a vaccine where you have to re-jigger the whole formula when the next strain comes out. They will protect against anything that has a particular particle size."
Respirators are an important element of the health and safety protections that make health care workers believe it is safe to come to work, he says. "It's important that health care workers get assurance that their administrators are doing all the right things and that they are taking every step possible to maximize the protective equipment that they have available for all the people who need it," Shipp says.
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