WASHINGTON, D.C. – Acknowledging the current shortage of both N95 and surgical masks, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a very simple solution to health care professionals taking care of confirmed or presumed cases of COVID-19: reuse those masks until you eventually catch coronavirus.

“All we are asking our health care professionals to do is to simply reuse their current masks until they become symptomatic with COVID-19. When you become ill with coronavirus, that’s when you’ll know the mask should be replaced,” explained FDA spokesperson Martina Brooks. “We don’t want to push the mask to its limit; we want to push the mask past it.”

To allay any anxieties on the part of health care professionals caused by this new guidance, the FDA recommends when masks run out completely to simply take a deep breath, bury your face into your inner elbow, run into the patient’s isolation room and do as much you can without breathing, and then run out of the room gasping for air.