Shipments of personal protective equipment and modified ventilators are being distributed to hospitals across Mississippi to assist medical teams treating Coronavirus patients. MPB’s Kobee Vance reports.
Personal protective equipment, or PPE, is essential for doctors and nurses who are working on the frontlines treating patients with Coronavirus. This past weekend the Mississippi Emergency Management agency helped deliver thousands of masks, gloves, gowns and other essential equipment to hospitals across the state. Greg Michel is MEMA’s Director.
“Even though the PPE has been very difficult to get, and we know that we got a lot of healthcare facilities out that are concerned about the level of PPE. For instance, we did 67 deliveries yesterday, and we delivered them into the night. We had some hospitals call and said ‘Where’s my stuff?’ and I said it’s in route literally, they are coming tonight. And it did.”
There’s been high demand for the equipment across the globe. Michel says MEMA has been working to find independent suppliers to serve Mississippi hospitals.
“So what we have been left to do is to go out and literally fight for it, and in most cases have to work through brokers to get this stuff globally, and then charter planes to get it flown to the United States and then truck it to our states to get it dispersed. So it’s been very complicated.”
MEMA is also helping supply hospitals with ventilators for COVID-19 patients with respiratory issues. There’s been a question about how many ventilators the state has. At a Friday press conference State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs says about 500 battery-powered ventilators have been sent to Mississippi state to be converted to AC power for use in hospitals soon. But when asked about the total number of ventilator units in the state, Dr. Dobbs says he doesn’t want to reveal that information.
"The thing that is of some concern to some of us, is that a number can provide misinformation. And a ventilator is not a ventilator because there's a lot of variability in this. If we can find a way to report it in a way that communicates the availability properly, we will certainly do that."
Dr Dobbs says a ventilator is a generic term, and not all ventilators serve the same role.