Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
House alerted of virus threat
Whistleblower: Still no real plan
WASHINGTON — The U.S. still lacks a comprehensive battle plan against the coronavirus in critical areas including masks, testing, treatments and vaccines, whistleblower Rick Bright warned Thursday in testimony before a House committee. “Our window of opportunity is closing,” he said.
The nation could face “the darkest winter in modern history” if the virus rebounds, the government vaccine scientist told lawmakers. Bright’s appearance came after his reassignment last month as head of a Health and Human Services biodefense agency, an action he
alleges was retaliation by the Trump administration.
“We need still a comprehensive plan, and everyone across the government and everyone in America needs to know what that plan is, and what role they play,” he told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration is launching a “groundbreaking initiative” to “replenish and modernize” the government’s stores of masks, ventilators and other essential pandemic-fighting medical equipment to create a 90-day reserve.
At the White House, Trump said Bright looked like an “angry, disgruntled employee,” and Bright’s boss, HHS Secretary Alex Azar, said, “Everything he is complaining about was achieved.”
“So this is like somebody who was in a choir and is now trying to say he was a soloist back then,” Azar added.
Trump said later at a visit to the Owens & Minor distribution center for medical supplies in Allentown, Penn., that his goal “is to produce everything America needs for ourselves and then export to the world, including medicines.”
Trump had complained about supply chains in a television interview that aired before he left Washington for the trip.
“These stupid supply chains that are all over the world — we have a supply chain where they’re made in all different parts of the world,” Trump said in the interview with Fox Business Network. “And one little piece of the world goes bad, and the whole thing is messed up.”
“We should have them all in the United States,” he said.
‘A LOT OF WORK TO DO’
Trump and his aides said the manufacturing of medical supplies would be carried out by U.S. companies, diminishing the reliance on foreign factories that have been the stockpile’s major sources.
The president said “the cupboards were bare” in the federal Strategic National Stockpile when the novel coronavirus arrived in the United States.
“I am determined that America will be fully prepared for any of the future outbreaks, of which we hope there’s going to be none,” Trump said. “Our effort begins by dramatically increasing our reserves.”
During his half-hour speech, Trump blamed the Obama administration for the stockpile’s condition, saying his predecessors had “depleted and never fully refilled” it.
While that was the case, a pandemic simulation organized by HHS just last summer found the government unprepared, in part because of “scarce medical countermeasures such as personal protective equipment.”
As part of the effort, Trump signed an executive order seeking to encourage domestic medical supply production by providing loans through the International Development Finance Corp.
The order gives the chief executive officer of the agency, Adam Boehler, authority under the Defense Production Act “for the domestic production of strategic resources needed to respond to the Covid-19 outbreak, or to strengthen any relevant domestic supply chains.”
Bright, who spoke in measured tones during five hours of questioning before the committee, didn’t appear to question the fact that there’s now an all-out effort, financed by billions in taxpayer dollars, to procure masks and other supplies, develop better tests and treatments and discover an effective vaccine.
Asked by Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., if administration officials have prepared the country for the “moment we are in” and the months ahead, Bright responded, “I think we have a lot of work to do to be prepared.”
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., asked if he should be concerned that Americans will have problems getting access to a vaccine when it’s available. Bright responded, “Absolutely, sir.”
Republican lawmakers for the most part did not criticize Bright directly. But Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma questioned him about continuing to collect his $285,000 salary while first on sick leave for a spike in blood pressure, and now on vacation as he tries to straighten out his work situation.
“You’re too sick to go into work, but you’re well enough to come here while getting paid,” Mullin said. “I have a hard time understanding that.”
Bright said one of the worst moments as he tried to raise alarms came when repeated efforts to jump-start U.S. production of respirator masks went nowhere.
TALE OF FRUSTRATION
Bright said one of the worst moments as he tried to raise alarms came when repeated efforts to jumpstart U.S. production of respirator masks went nowhere.
He recalled getting emails in late January from Mike Bowen, an executive at a medical supply company called Prestige Ameritech, indicating that its N95 mask supply was “completely decimated.”
“And he said: ‘We’re in deep s***. The world is. And we need to act,’” Bright said. “And I pushed that forward to the highest levels I could in HHS and got no response. From that moment, I knew that we were going to have a crisis for our health care workers because we were not taking action.”
Following Bright to the witness table, Bowen told lawmakers he’s a Republican who voted for Trump. He added that he admires Bright.
As part of his whistleblower complaint, Bright is seeking to be reinstated to his old job. A federal watchdog agency has found “reasonable grounds” that he was removed as a reprisal.
HHS, Bright’s employer,
says it strongly disagrees with his allegations and says it reassigned him to a high-profile position helping to lead the development of new coronavirus tests at the National Institutes of Health.
More than 85,000 people have died from covid-19 in the U.S., representing more than one-fourth of global deaths and the world’s highest toll, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, more than 4.4 million have been infected and more than 300,000 have died. Bright, who has a doctoral degree in immunology, said the nation’s path forward should be based on science. The steps include:
m Establishing a national testing strategy.
m Doubling down on educating the public about basic safety measures such as frequent hand-washing and wearing masks in public places.
m Setting up a system to fairly distribute equipment and supplies that are scarce and highly sought.
BUILDING A STOCKPILE
One senior administration official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the stockpile announcement before the president’s remarks in Pennsylvania on Thursday, said the net effect was that, as the virus reached the United States, the stockpile held one to three weeks’ supplies of essential protective equipment, including N95 masks and gowns.
Another administration
official said calculations have now been made of how much of each type of equipment is needed to maintain a supply of one, two or three months.
“We will be working to put that on the shelves in a manner so the stockpile is not a singular purchase,” the official said. Instead, U.S. manufacturers will keep “production lines warm,” the official said, so they would not have to start from scratch if surges are needed in the event cases of covid-19 spike later.
Another official said that when the pandemic arrived in the United States, the stockpile carried only 28% of the emergency supplies that fighting it requires. It did not carry medicine or testing supplies, the official said, adding that the goal now is to stock “a much broader and deeper set of supplies.”
In addition to bolstering the federal storehouse of crucial supplies like ventilators and respirator masks, the president’s plan — being billed as the Strategic National Stockpile 2.0 — calls for entering into contracts with companies to maintain a flow into the stockpiles, similar to the way the Defense Department manages its supply chains, according to senior administration officials.
Under the new system, the government will collect information on the manufacturing of supplies, what hospitals have available on their shelves and how quickly they are using supplies, the official said.
When the coronavirus
arrived, the stockpile contained 13 million N95 masks, and the goal now is to have 300 million by the fall and eventually 1 billion. The administration also will seek to increase the supply of gowns from 2 million to 7 million, and to store “millions of milliliters of crucial drugs,” an official said.
“Hope we’re not going to need it, but it’s there,” said Trump, who reiterated his eagerness for the country to reopen. “Never again will another president inherit empty shelves or expired products.”
OUTBREAKS PERSIST
Even as Bright gave his dire warning of the “darkest winter in modern history,” governors were starting to slowly reopen some segments of their economies, pointing to evidence that covid-19 deaths and new hospitalizations are peaking or starting to recede in their states.
While many state and local officials see modest signs of progress in the pandemic fight, coronavirus outbreaks are testing public health networks in pockets of the U.S.
Among them is a suburb of Washington, D.C. The head of a hospital system in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, a majority-black community bordering the city, said the area’s intensive care units “are bursting at the seams.”
Meanwhile, a civil rights group’s lawsuit claimed the county’s jail failed to stop an “uncontrolled” coronavirus outbreak and isolated infected prisoners in cells with walls covered in feces, mucus and blood.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has announced the first stage of a reopening plan beginning this evening, but Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said Thursday that a local order would extend through June 1.
Meanwhile, the hospital in Gallup, N.M., is on the front lines of an outbreak on the Navajo Nation that recently prompted a 10-day lockdown, with police setting up roadblocks to discourage nonemergency shopping.
While many states are lifting lockdowns, there are frustrations among some people still living under strong restrictions. In Michigan, hundreds of people angry over Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-athome order, some of them armed, rallied in heavy rain outside the state Capitol on Thursday, while about 500 people protested outside the home of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Elsewhere, Richmond, Va., opted out of the state’s gradual reopening for now due to an increase in cases and its large minority population, and Kansas’s governor delayed reopening bars and bowling alleys.
Information for this article was contributed by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Richard Lardner, Jill Colvin, Darlene Superville, Zeke Miller, Marc Levy, Jonathan Lemire, Jeff Amy and Christopher Rugaber of The Associated Press; by Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post; and by Mario Parker, Justin Sink and Jordan Fabian of Bloomberg News.