As long as everyone in public wears a mask, it's not really important how good it is as long as it covers the mounth and the nose. This is because you basically switch from protecting the wearer to protecting other from infected asymptomatic wearer.
In such a case even a simple home made mask does wonders in preventing infected droplets contaminating a wide area around the wearer, not to mention the benefit of reducing hand based contamination due to not being able to touch your mouth and nose.
Due to this the Czech government introduced mandatory mask wearing (including self made) in public - if you don't wear one, the police will first warn you and then you get a hefty fine if you still don't comply. Also Slovakia (a neighboring country) just introduced the same.
As for protecting medical personel - yep they definitely need the best protective equipment tjey can get, to prevent even more of them getting infected (there have already been cases for medical personel, police & firefighters). For that reason an "air bridge" has been established that regularly airlifts PPE from china, even including one of the NATO leased gigantic AN-124s.
That way both regular people are protected (from infecting each other) and first line responders as well (by proper air lifted PPE).
Foe this reason ot feels worrying or almost sad to see the reaction in te UK and USA slowly waking up to the seriousness of the whole situation.
- we have no PPE for first line workers, but rest assured it has been ordered (unless its in plane and in the air now, it's too late, should have been done weeks ago)
- not enough beds/ventilators (should have cleared hospitals of elective surgeries and non acute cases)
- cant tell people to wear masks as there are none (tell them to make some or face a fine)
- people still congregating in bars and restaurants (you should have closed those long ago)
- with schools and day care closed first line responders have nowhere to put their children (keep some vare centers open to care of children of critical workers)
- people are not respecting our guidance (well, then it should not be a guidance but punishable emergency state ordnance)
Hopefully others can get up to speed quickly before it is too late. The local emergency measures in Czech Republichave been pretty strict, but so far (and I really hope not to jinx it) seem to be working. Arround 1200 infected so far with smaller Neighboring Austria havig 5 thousand. Still two people died... But at lest the people on ventilators are still in the tens.