BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — With at least 100 Boston hospital workers testing positive for COVID-19, the race to find personal protective equipment, or PPE, continues.
While some progress has been made, Gov. Charlie Baker expressed his frustration at a press conference Thursday afternoon over the lack of gear and the difficult process of getting it to the state.
"I stand here as someone who has had confirmed orders for millions of pieces of gear evaporate in front of us, and I can't tell you how frustrating it is," Gov. Baker said. "We now have other orders that are outstanding that are probably, quote-unquote confirmed, but we've literally gotten to the point where, our basic position is, until the thing shows up here in the Commonwealth of Mass, it doesn't exist."
Baker said there were people spending "hours and hours and hours" trying to acquire PPE.
"Our first responders, our healthcare workers, everybody deserves to have that gear, and I'm telling you, we're killing ourselves trying to make it happen," he said.
Last week, Baker expressed this frustration on a call with President Donald Trump, saying that, since he was following Trump's guidance to seek protective equipment at the state level, the state "lost to the feds" on coronavirus supply bids.
“We took very seriously the push that you made previously on one of these calls, that we should not just rely on the stockpile and that we should go out and buy stuff and put in orders and try to create pressure on manufacturers and distributors,” Baker told the President. “On three big orders we lost to the feds.”
Baker To Trump: 'We Lost To The Feds' On Coronavirus Supply Bids
WBZ NewsRadio's Shari Small (@ShariSmallNews) reports
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