Hawaii health care workers on edge as outbreak hits home

HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - Hawaii’s unionized nurses say many are on edge since healthcare workers are at the greatest risk of exposure to coronavirus.

“There is some anxiety,” said Daniel Ross, president of the Hawaii Nurses Association and nurse at Queens Medical Center on Punchbowl.

“They’re the ones who are going to be first line especially among the emergency room nurses."

HNA says N95 masks need to be specially fitted to the user since they're not all the same.

Ross says some hospitals like the Queen’s Medical Center are ramping up fit testing of masks. During the test, a large hood is used to make sure there’s no leakage and the mask has a good fit.

"They are going around and re-fit testing with different styles to make sure there's one that fits for them because everyone is shaped different," he said.

The Queen’s Health Systems says it has adequate supplies and that it’s staff is regularly training for events like this.

The Healthcare Association of Hawaii added all of its facilities also have backup supplies.

“There’s been a couple of instances where one of our members had a shortage of masks and we were able to back fill their supply," said Hilton Raethel, Healthcare Association of Hawaii president and CEO.

“Their own distributor came through three days later. So they just replaced the ones out."

Meanwhile, Ross says three nurses who work at Liberty Dialysis Hawaii in Salt Lake recently traveled back to Hawaii from Australia and were told by their employer to self-quarantine for two weeks.

Unlike Japan, South Korea, Italy and Iran, the CDC has no travel restrictions on Australia.

The nurses union says it was told the policy applied to all international travel and it’s okay with that since the nurses are still getting paid.

“We don’t have a problem when it’s not going to affect our members financially and not make them take their sick leave for it,” Ross said.

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