Medical personnel at the Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx were allegedly given Yankees-themed panchos, and told to use them as PPE, or personal protective gear, the New York Times reports.
An obstetrician-gynecologist resident at the hospital snapped a photo of the pancho, and shared it on Twitter, writing, "I'm a physician at a hospital in NYC and THIS IS THE 'PPE' I WAS JUST HANDED for my shift. Our federal government has completely failed its health care workers."
In a statement provided by the Montefiore Medical Center explained that the panchos were donated to the hospital, and "intended for personal use."
"We received a very generous donation of 2,500 ponchos from our Bronx neighbors and friends The New York Yankees," the statement reads. "We distributed them, first come first served, to the first 2,500 of our staff who walked in the door last night and this morning. This was a gift intended for their personal use."
The Montefiore Health System has reportedly issued a reminder to its employees that all media requests "must be shared and vetted" by their public relations department in an attempt to curb the amount of complaints that get out to the public over the lack of PPEs.
PPEs have become a major point of contention since the coronavirus took hold in the United States. This past Sunday, Donald Trump speculated that health care workers in New York were stealing masks from hospitals, citing the state's sharp increase in need of protective gear in recent days. "Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door?," Trump asked. "We have that in a lot of different places and somebody should look in to it."
New York has over 92,000 coronavirus cases, as of Thursday evening, with more than 10,000 people hospitalized.
