Yesterday I saw a FB post of one of our nurses at L&M. She was in her PPE and I could see a surgical mask but couldn’t tell is she had a N95 under that.
I was about to ask her when I looked at the comments. I was pleased that one of her coworkers had already asked and the answer was that yes, she had an N95 under the surgical mask. This pleased me in two ways.
First, that she was wearing a N95.
Second, that members have each other’s back by asking each other about it.
I had a call with AFT national healthcare leaders this afternoon. One of the interesting things we spoke about was difference decontamination process. While best practice continues to be that N95s are never reused (as they are disposable), we are trying to evaluate what is the “best of the worse” if you will.
One of the ideas which seems to be logical is that each employee would be given 5 N95s, which they could store in paper bags and rotate.
The idea being that the virus seems to survive 3 days on cardboard, so 5 days would account for that plus 2 days.
Other decontamination processes are Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide, UV light, and liquid hydrogen peroxide.
More info To come.
We are 38 days since our first confirmed Covid positive case in Connecticut.
44,309 have been tested
13, 381 have tested positive
1760 are currently hospitalized, up 106 from yesterday
602 have died, up 48
Please, if you or your members are asked to care for a Covid positive patient or a PUI (person under investigation/rule out) without prober PPE, including an N95, please let your Local leadership know, DPH know at https://dphflisevents.ct.gov and me know at jbrady@aftct.org
Follow this link for the newest info from AFT Connecticut http://aftct.org/sector/795
Follow this link for free counseling services for AFT members https://www.aft.org/benefits/trauma
I’ll close this with a message from our AFT Connecticut President on the courage she sees in those on the front lines.
Thanks Jan, we needed that.
Be safe,
John
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