AUSTIN -- When the director of a Farmers Branch clinic couldn’t order respirator masks to protect against new coronavirus in February, she drove to Home Depot and filled a cart with safety goggles, face masks and full-body suits.
The decision proved prescient. Woven Health Clinic Executive Director Lisa Rigby is now one of several providers statewide struggling to get personal protective equipment critical in protecting medical staff from COVID-19.
“That’s the question clinics and physicians are starting to ask now is ‘If you run out of protective gear and you can’t get it, what do you do?’” Rigby said.
Hospitals generally stockpile such equipment. But not primary care offices that have become the front line in screening and testing patients for the virus.
The state announced Friday it will receive medical supplies from a national stockpile within the week. But the volume of masks and how they are divided among providers remain to be seen.
Statewide at least 39 people have tested positive for the virus, with Friday marking the first cases in Austin and the possibility of community spread in Dallas.
Rigby can’t order more face masks from her usual supplier until March 31. Even then, she can only request two boxes, she said.
Physicians who see patients without proper protective gear run the risk of becoming sick or having to self-quarantine, effectively removing them from the workforce.
“Our regular sources are drying up,” said Jody Hopkins, Executive Director of Texas Association of Texas Charitable Clinics. “Basically when we run out of (personal protective equipment) we don’t know what we will do.”
Nationwide, demand is outpacing supply for specialized N95 respirator facial masks that filter all types of particles, including bacteria and viruses. In response to shortages, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said looser fitting surgical masks can be used as an alternative.
Still, those can be in short supply, in addition to face shields, gloves, gowns and hand sanitizer, physicians said. Some clinics are reusing their masks, in line with suggestions from the CDC.
“In the perfect situation single-use personal protective equipment would be available for every provider who performed a test for COVID-19,” said Dr. Clive Fields, Chief Medical Officer of the Houston-area VillageMD. “We have to make the best of what we do have.”
The state’s public health agency does not keep its own emergency supply of medical equipment. State Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican, proposed creating one after the 2014 Ebola scare. But his bill that would have budgeted somewhere between $3-5 million in seed money died.
Enthusiasm for preparation generally fades once the epidemic ends, he said.
“People go back to normal ways and don’t think of being prepared for something that is potentially a tragedy and devastating to our society,” he said.
Already public health officials in several states, including Washington and Massachusetts, have requested supplies from the national stockpile.
But the cache, known as the Strategic National Stockpile, has less than 15 percent of the respirators and face masks needed to address the virus spread, according to National Geographic.
The federal government is releasing 25 percent of the reserves and Texas will receive “its proportional share,” Texas Department of State Health Services spokesman Chris Van Deusen said in a statement. It’s not clear what that supply will be.
DSHS Commissioner John Hellerstedt warned physicians on a conference call earlier this week that the national stockpile will not have enough personal protective equipment to supply large populations over an extended period of time.
“We are going to have to make some very difficult choices,” he told them. “You are confronting it already.”
Correction, 10:20 p.m. Friday, March 13: This story has been updated to reflect that Woven Health Clinic is in Farmers Branch, not Dallas.
