Nurses to demonstrate outside White House over lack of personal protective equipment

Members of National Nurses United, the country's largest union of registered nurses, will protest at the White House on Tuesday, demanding more personal protective equipment to use while caring for patients with COVID-19.

The 150,000-member union is calling on President Trump to use the Defense Production Act to compel companies into making N95 masks, face shields, gowns, respirators, and other equipment. "With no federal health and safety standards, nurses and other health-care workers in many hospitals around the country have not been provided with adequate PPE to protect them from exposure to the virus," National Nurses United said in a statement.

The protest will take place at Lafayette Park, and the group plans on reading the names of nurses who have died from the virus, The Washington Post reports.

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Nurses, doctors, and other hospital staffers across the United States have been saying since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic that they do not have enough PPE, and have to reuse these critical supplies. During a coronavirus briefing on Monday, Trump claimed there isn't a shortage, saying, "What we're doing is delivering a number that nobody anywhere in the world is delivering."