Health care professionals from the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the American Nurses Association (ANA) sent a joint letter to President Donald Trump on Saturday pleading for more medical supplies amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the letter, the three organizations implored Trump to utilize the Defense Production Act (DPA) to help with the “dwindling supplies” of respirators, surgical masks, and other necessary tools.
“America’s hospitals, health systems, physicians and nurses urge you to immediately use the DPA to increase the domestic production of medical supplies and equipment that hospitals, health systems, nurses and all front line providers so desperately need,” they wrote.
“Even with an infusion of supplies from the strategic stockpile and other federal resources, there will not be enough medical supplies, including ventilators, to respond to the projected COVID-19 outbreak,” the organizations wrote.
Trump has tried to brush off reports of supply shortages and insisted that he and his administration is doing a “tremendous job” with the coronavirus outbreak.
However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the disease experts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, told reporters on Saturday that the shortages are, in fact, real.
The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
