10 Sunday,March 29, 2020 DAILY NEWSNYDailyNews.com
CORONAVIRUS
Nurses at a Bronx hospital
pleaded Saturday for more
protective gear while treating
coronavirus patients, blasting
official claims that there were
enough supplies for health
care workers.
Two nurses at Jacobi Med-
ical Center have now con-
tracted the illness because of
alack of equipment, they said.
“We have a number of
workers — two in this hospi-
tal, two nurses — fighting for
their lives in the ICUs right
now,” pediatric nurse Sean
Petty said at a news confer-
ence (inset) outside the hos-
pital in Morris Park on Sat-
urday.
Petty and others criticized
Mayor de Blasio’s claims that
there were enough masks and
gowns to protect medical
professionals for at least the
next week.
Nurses at Jacobi said there
are so few
su p p l i e s
th a t
th e y ’ v e
had to ra-
ti o n t h e
protective
gear, forc-
ing them
to w e a r
N9 5
ma s k s
lo n g e r
than they
should, or
wear sur-
gi c a l
masks on top of the N
masks to preserve them.
“We will not let any health
official or government official
say that we have enough until
every health care worker has
an N95 for every time they
interact with a COVID-
patient,” Petty said.
Several nurses have fallen
ill across New York met-
ropolitan region.
Mount Sinai West assistant
nursing manager Kious Kelly,
3 6, died from the disease last
week.
De Blasio said the city
delivered 200,000 N95 masks
to hospitals Friday, with
8 00,000 more to come Sat-
urday along with loads of
le s s - p r o t e c t i v e s u r g i c a l
masks and other gear.
With News Wire Services
Bx. nurses
protest
supply gap
BY THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWSAway from the coronavirus
front lines, specialist doctors
and nurses who keep us heal-
thy — but whose expertise isn’t
needed to fight the pandemic
—are struggling to keep their
businesses afloat.
Spring is one of the busiest
seasons for Dr. Payel Gupta, an
allergist with ENT & Allergy
Associates, which has 46 loca-
tions across the New York re-
gion. Shelter-in-place rules
have dramatically decreased
in-person visits to Gupta’s Up-
per West Side office.
“Companies are having to
furlough a lot of employees,
and that’s the hardest part for
me,” Gupta told the Daily
News. “I feel a responsibility to
keep going just so my staff have
something to do, so there’s not
areason for them to be fur-loughed.”
The city and state recently
ordered all nonemergency
medical procedures to be post-
poned to ease the burden on
doctors caring for coronavirus
patients, who now exceed
2 0,000 in the city.
But without regular check-
ups, Gupta worries that pa-
tients suffering minor prob-
lems like asthma could be af-
flicted with more serious prob-
le m s , c l o g g i n g t h e c i t y ’s
packed emergency rooms.
“It’s been this huge discus-
sion among all of us: How do
we make sure we cut down on
the spread but also manage pa-
tients so they don’t get sick and
end up in the emergency room
for other things?” she asked.
“It’s a fine balance.”
Gupta, who is five months
pregnant, monitors her pa-
tients with virtual visits and
phone calls, which she sees assafer for everyone. On a recent
day, she booked one in-person
visit and nine virtual appoint-
ments.
But those calls don’t always
translate into revenue. “Most
offices are small businesses, so
we’re counting on that in-
come,” she said.
Dr. Marc Faber, who runs
six dental practices across the
New York region, said the lack
of regular revenue is puttinghim between a rock and a hard
place.
“T h e [ Me d i c a i d ] r e i m -
bursement rate is so poor and
we’re being mandated by the
government that we can only
do emergency procedures,”
said Faber, the CEO of Edge
Dental Management. “I can’t
pay my staff on that so I may as
well shut my doors, but I don’t
want to.
“Every [dental] office is in aBY ESHA RAY
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