The shoes were placed there by members of National Nurses United, the largest registered nurses union in the United States. At the vigil, the nurses pleaded with the Senate to pass the HEROES Act, a $ 3 billion bill proposed by Democrats that, among many other measures, would increase the production of personal protective equipment that hospitals need to treat patients. coronavirus patients.
National Nurses United says the bill, which would also provide direct payments to Americans and funds for state and local governments, could save the lives of patients and nurses.
As of Tuesday, 164 nurses had died from the coronavirus, according to National Nurses United. Some of them, as Sims said in her speech on the Capitol lawn, died in the same hospitals where they worked.
The nurses union held a similar protest in May outside the White House, then surrounded by 88 pairs of shoes. There were more than 70,000 deaths then, Sims said.
More than two months later, the number of deaths in the United States has doubled to more than 140,000. Sims said the staggering death rate in the United States demonstrates a “complete and utter failure of the presidential leadership and of Congress.”
The House of Representatives passed the Democrat-backed HEROES Act on May 15, a week after the nurses’ rally. It stalled in the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Senators have been drafting their own stimulus bill without input from Democrats, according to Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer.
Since the start of the pandemic, healthcare workers in the US have faced a shortage of personal protective equipment or PPE, including surgical masks and N95 respirators and scrubs, leading to reuse and reuse. using contaminated materials. National Nurses United says inadequate PPE has contributed to nursing deaths.
The Trump administration has been criticized for not widely invoking the Defense Production Law, which gives the government more control during emergencies to direct industrial production. It has been invoked only in a few cases, such as to test supplies.
As a result of the shortage, several states have had to rely on the private market, which is also facing shortages and is raising prices due to international demand.
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