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It was a stealth transaction, arranged through “someone who knew someone who knew someone,” taking place at an undisclosed location in an unnamed mid-Atlantic state. The getaway vehicles were disguised as food service delivery trucks, and they mapped out separate routes back to Massachusetts to avoid detection. Those were the lengths that a hospital system in Springfield, Mass., went to this month to procure urgently needed masks for workers treating a growing number of patients with the coronavirus. (Seelye, Jacobs, Becker and Arango, 4/20)

Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s decision to spend almost $1 billion in taxpayer funds to buy protective masks drew national attention as an aggressive move by California to solve one of the most nagging problems of the coronavirus crisis. But almost two weeks after he announced the deal during a cable TV interview, very few details have been disclosed. The governor’s advisors have so far declined requests for information about the agreement with BYD, the Chinese electric car manufacturer hired to produce the masks, though the state has already wired the company the first installment of $495 million. (Myers, 4/20)

With so many critical health care products now made offshore that supplies could not meet surging demand as the coronavirus overwhelmed hospitals, America’s attention has again turned to the atrophied state of domestic manufacturing. As imports from Chinese manufacturers vaporized and other countries clamped down on exports, health care workers improvised with homemade face masks while American factories retooled in a desperate race to make ventilators and protective equipment. It’s a pattern, it seemed, in which devices invented in the U.S. end up being produced overseas. (DePillis, 4/21)

The New York State Nurses Association filed three lawsuits against the state and two hospital systems on Monday, alleging that dangerous work guidelines and protective gear shortages exacerbated the spread of the novel coronavirus. The state’s largest nurses’ union filed suit against the New York Department of Health in New York County Supreme Court, charging that it failed to ensure that health-care employees had enough safety equipment, including N95 respirators and fluid-resistant gowns. (Ramachandran, 4/20)

NYSNA also alleged that the state health department failed to enforce regulations around the safe use of personal protective equipment, which led to hundreds of members testing positive for the virus. “Infected health care workers have become vectors of virus transmission to their families and the public at large,” according to the suit, which was filed Monday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. “DOH’s actions have thus created a nuisance to public health, which, although acutely injurious to frontline nurses, has endangered the public at large.” (Eisenberg, 4/20)

The New York state nurses union filed lawsuits against the state and two hospitals Monday over what it says are unsafe working conditions and a lack of protective equipment. The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) sued the New York Department of Health and two hospitals, Montefiore Medical Center and Westchester Medical Center, claiming they put nurses’s health and safety at risk. (Coleman, 4/20)

A national nurses union announced Monday that members of its organization would protest at the White House on Tuesday to demand funding for mass production of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the next coronavirus stimulus package. National Nurses United (NNU), the largest nurses union in the U.S., said in a press release that members planned to read aloud names of nurses who have died from COVID-19 as hospitals across the country struggle to provide masks, gloves and other equipment for staffers. (Bowden, 4/20)

In other new on personal protective equipment —

More than 40 employees who spent nearly a month living at the facility where they were helping to make protective gear for health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic finally clocked out and went home to their families on Monday. The crew at chemical company Braskem America in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, spent the last 28 days split between two 12-hour shifts as they worked to make polypropylene, a raw material used to make N95 masks, hospital gowns and sanitary wipes. (4/21)

The Department of Veterans Affairs is the country's largest health care network with 300 hospitals, clinics and nursing homes nationwide. More than 9 million American veterans get care from the VA, and today VA doctors and nurses serve on the frontlines of the pandemic crisis. (Lawrence, 4/20)

The nurse who was told to remove her mask on the labor and delivery floor so she wouldn’t scare patients, then reprimanded when she didn’t. The ICU clinician who brought in a protective hood, was told to take it back home, then felt his job was threatened when he resisted. The doctor who was told he’d be fired if he spoke to the press about not having enough masks in his hospital. These are all cases reported to WBUR by the people involved. None of them would tell their story on the record for fear of further retaliation by hospital administrators. (Bebinger, 4/20)

With a shortage of masks endangering workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, Saukville manufacturer Rebel Converting is transforming its sanitary wipe fabric into 3.5 million free masks for clinics, nonprofits and public employees in the Milwaukee area. The company is also providing the material to Allen Edmonds, a Port Washington shoe manufacturer that has stopped shoe production to focus on masks. As of April 15, the company has made 50,000 masks for health care workers at Ascension, Froedtert Hospital and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. (Rumage, 4/20)