Dozens of hospital workers test positive for coronavirus

There have been ongoing discussions about the utility of resuscitation in covid-19. Under best circumstances it will take several minutes to correctly apply all of the necessary protective equipment to reduce your chances of getting aerosolized virus on your face, hands or body. That's with just one person, let alone multiple people that are generally required to resuscitate someone. There is also a high risk for dislodging your protective equipment while performing CPR, thereby risking infecting yourself.

Assuming the person is not already on a breathing machine, getting them onto that breathing machine is considered extremely high risk for aerosol generation and for now is being performed with PAPRs (powered air purifying respirators) which take a long time to apply correctly (think 10 minutes) while the person is not breathing.

Assuming the arrest occurred in the setting of inadequate breathing support on maximal ventilator settings, performing CPR could be considered futile and expose a significant number of people to the virus as it was respiratory failure that lead to the arrest and trying drugs to treat the heart won't reverse the respiratory faiulre. Sudden cardiac events have also been reported as well, virtually none of which have responded to conventional resuscitation efforts which raises the question of how much risk people should be exposed to for a potentially futile attempt.

There are no easy answers and generally the recommendation has been to individualize the approach to each person. However, the sentiment seems to be, if someone arrests all the protective gear goes on first and if that takes 5-10 minutes it significantly reduces someone's chances for survival under the best circumstances.