As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its ninth month, a new report by National Nurses United, the largest nurses’ union in the United States, finds hospitals are still failing to provide adequate PPE and are unprepared as the surge is expected to get worse during the flu season.

Nurses also report mental health struggles related to the pandemic.

The union estimates at least 2,000 frontline healthcare workers have died due to COVID-19, with nurses of color accounting for half of those deaths, even though they’re less than a quarter of the workforce.

Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, says the lack of preparedness is having a devastating toll on healthcare workers.

“Hospitals still don’t have a plan in place for a surge — and we’re currently in a surge,” Ross says. “It’s the lack of response, the improper response, that has nurses and other healthcare workers really down.”

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