Tehran 14 March_The former Surgeon General of the United States has warned that America’s top medical centers are suffering from a severe shortage of coronavirus testing supplies and are being forced to turn away potential patients amid the fast-spreading pandemic.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club(YJC)_Vivek Murthy, who served in the administration of former President Barack Obama, made the warning during an interview with CNN on Friday. The Surgeon General is the leading US government spokesperson on matters of public health
“I spoke to a number of doctors yesterday from one of top medical institutions in our country and in the world, a hospital which has saved many, many lives, people from all over the world come here for care, and what those doctors told me is that they are seeing many people who are coming in with coronavirus-like symptoms….they want to test them for the coronavirus but they can’t because they’re limited by the capacity that the state’s lab has and what they’re having to do is ration tests,” Murthy said.
“The can only now give test to the people who are most sick and so they’re having to turn people away who may have the coronavirus and send them back to their homes and into the community,” he said.
“They don’t like doing this, they know this is not the best practice, but they’re also running out of supplies; they’re having to share masks with each other, share masks after using them with a patient instead of throwing them away and getting a new one because they don’t have enough masks,” he added.
“This is happening in the one of the top institutions in this country and I guarantee you it’s happening in many other institutions.”