U.S. STOCKPILE of protective gear getting low.
Federal agencies, states said to face high prices, profiteering
The government’s emergency stockpile of respirator masks, gloves and other medical supplies is running low and is nearly exhausted by the coronavirus outbreak, leaving the Trump administration and the states to compete for personal protective equipment in a freewheeling global marketplace rife with profiteering and price-gouging, according to Homeland Security officials involved in the acquisition effort.
As coronavirus hot spots flare from coast to coast, the demand for safety equipment is both immediate and widespread, with health officials, hospital executives and governors saying their shortages are critical and that health care workers are putting their lives at risk while trying to help the surging number of patients.
Two Homeland Security officials said that the stores kept in the Department of Health and Human Service’s Strategic National Stockpile are nearly gone.
“The stockpile was designed to respond to a handful of cities. It was never built or designed to fight a 50-state pandemic,” said a Homeland Security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the stockpile. “This is not only a U.S. government problem. The supply chain for [protective gear] worldwide has broken down, and there is a lot of price gouging happening.”
President Donald Trump said during Tuesday’s White House briefing that the administration has nearly 10,000 ventilators on reserve and that authorities are ready to deploy the lifesaving equipment rapidly to coronavirus hot spots in coming weeks. He also said that large amounts of protective gear were being shipped directly from manufacturers to hospitals. But the Homeland Security officials said the stockpile has not been able to handle the load.
Several reports in recent days have documented a Wild-West-style online marketplace for bulk medical supplies dominated by intermediaries and hoarders who are selling N95 respirator masks and other gear at huge markups. Forbes reported that U.S. vendors have sold 280 million masks — mostly into the export market — and that U.S. states and local governments were outbid in the frenzy.
There are few signs the Trump administration is making efforts to stop the export shipments or seize the supplies for use in U.S. hospitals, despite statements from Attorney General William Barr last week that U.S. wholesalers hoarding masks and other supplies would get “a knock on your door.”
Governors have been pleading with federal authorities to ship more equipment and protective gear. Distribution of the supplies has happened unevenly, with some states saying they’ve received a fraction of the supplies they desperately need and some cities having received no assistance from their state governments.
Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the government had anticipated the Strategic National Stockpile would be exhausted, and the administration is moving swiftly to procure and distribute medical supplies.
“FEMA planning assumptions for covid-19 pandemic response acknowledged that the Strategic National Stockpile [SNS] alone could not fulfill all requirements at the
State and tribal level,” Janet Montesi, a FEMA spokeswoman, said in a statement.
“The federal government will exhaust all means to identify and attain medical and other supplies needed to combat the virus.”
The government has more than $16 billion available to make the acquisitions, she said.
According to the White House, FEMA had shipped or delivered 11.6 million N95 respirator masks, 26 million surgical masks, 5.2 million face shields, 4.3 million surgical gowns, 22 million gloves, and 8,100 ventilators as of Saturday.
A stockpile of 1.5 million expired N95 masks that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has in storage will be distributed to the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the border protection agency said in a statement. The CDC has issued guidelines for the safe use of masks with expiration dates that have passed, potentially leaving their elastic bands too loose to form a proper face seal.
Rep. Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., said she and other lawmakers were told that some of the expired border protection agency’s masks would be given to hospitals.
An agency official on Wednesday confirmed to The Washington Post that the masks would go to immigration enforcement agents and airport screening officers instead, not to FEMA employees or medical personnel.