US hospitals tell staff to keep quiet about coronavirus working conditions

US hospitals are warning their employees to keep their mouths shut about their working conditions amid the coronavirus — or risk being fired.

“Hospitals are muzzling nurses and other health care workers in an attempt to preserve their image. It’s outrageous,” Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Nurses Association, told Bloomberg News.

She said the workers — who are toiling on the front lines of the deadly pandemic, many times without the appropriate safety gear — “must have the ability to tell the public what is really going on inside the facilities where they are caring for Covid-19 patients.”