Factories retrofit to battle pandemic
Bay Area businesses are ramping up production of critical medical equipment to fight COVID19, and in some cases converting factories for that purpose, to help address a nationwide shortage.
The transformation comes as Bay Area health care workers speak out about the lack of masks, ventilators and tests needed to fight the coronavirus, especially during the surge of cases expected in the next couple of weeks.
After Fremont officials declared a local emergency, the city fasttracked its zoning permit process two weeks ago — cutting it from around four months to less than a week — to let more than 115 biotech companies make COVID19 supplies.
Within a week of the city’s changes, one company — BioGenex — secured the goahead to provide raw material to Roche labs to make COVID19 tests. Other companies that already had the right permits let the city know they were switching gears. 3D printer PrinterPrezz is now producing medical supplies and hospital instruments instead of implants. Medical equipment maker Evolve Manufacturing Technologies pivoted to pushing out 3,000 test kits a day, CEO Noreen King said.
Those kits include nasal swabs, which are used to take test samples from patients. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that California’s shortage of coronavirus tests was mainly due to a lack of swabs.
Another critical need as COVID19 patients enter intensive care units is ventilators. Evolve is also working with California industrial design company Nectar Product Development to produce a lowcost ventilator, King said. Evolve previously made around 400 ultrasound machines a month, but is setting up a new production line to make up to 50,000 ventilators a month instead. The new ventilator design still needs approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
“Ventilators have never been massproduced before,” King said. “It’s very hard. But we’re going to get there. A lot of people are working on this. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Evolve is hiring 150 people to meet the demand.
Not only is the medical equipment for battling COVID19 in short supply, but so are the materials needed for the companies to make more of those products, King said.
Finding supplies is “super difficult” right now, King said. Although her company has always tried to source locally, most parts still come from China, where production is backlogged under COVID19 lockdown. Even with that country slowly reopening, air freight remains curtailed because passenger flights are nearly eliminated.
Fremont Deputy City Manager Christina Briggs said the city is capitalizing on the capacity of many companies already doing advanced manufacturing to meet the moment.
“Right now we’re so grateful that these companies are able to mobilize overnight to this crisis,” Briggs said.
Fremont companies are joining a statewide effort to fill critical supply shortages. More than 350 businesses and manufacturers in California have repurposed their facilities to make medical supplies and essential products, according to the governor’s office. Gap and St. John Knits are making masks, gowns and scrubs for hospital workers. AnheuserBusch and other distilleries are producing hand sanitizer. Long Beach satellite maker Virgin Orbit partnered with medical experts to develop a simply designed ventilator that can be massproduced and is donating an aircraft to bring masks from China to the Bay Area.
Getting ventilators to treat the growing number of COVID19 patients and masks to protect workers are top priorities, Newsom said Wednesday during his daily coronavirus update.
There were 9,587 confirmed COVID19 cases in the state on Wednesday, according to county health data. The number of patients in intensive care was 774 — a nearly 17% increase from Tuesday.
“We are preparing for a twothirds increase in hospital bed capacity, not just in terms of physical needs but making sure we have the appropriate protective gear and ventilators and personnel,” Newsom said.
California already requested 10,000 ventilators from the federal government. By Saturday, the state had nearly half of them, according to the governor’s office. About 170 of them were broken. Silicon Valley clean energy company Bloom Energy refurbished them over the weekend and sent them back to Los Angeles for use.
Newsom said he was working on different partnerships around the world to get a few thousand more.
“There is simply not a purveyor of ventilators that hasn’t already received a call directly from me or the team,” Newsom said. “We are searching high and low across the globe.”
Unlike President Trump, Newsom has not used executive power to mandate that companies make supplies. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to force General Motors to manufacture ventilators on Friday.
The California Nurses Association, which represents more than 100,000 nurses in the state, says the state and federal governments both need to do more, Government Relations Director Stephanie Roberson said.
“Quite honestly, we’re spending way too much time fighting at the facility level day to day on ensuring our nurses get the proper PPE,” Roberson said, using the term for personal protective equipment.
Some Bay Area nurses on the front lines say they have enough protective gear now. But, as policies change, sometimes daily, to stretch those supplies, they worry that won’t last.
“I wish that I was confident that our country had enough PPE, and it is inexcusable to me that there is not,” Becky CherryMay, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Vacaville Medical Center, said. “We had plenty of time to prepare.”
CherryMay said nurses caring for COVID19 patients at her hospital wear the same N95 mask throughout the day, which increases the risk of infection — similar to reports from other Bay Area hospitals. She started using her own masks at work.
Kaiser Permanente Vice President Irene Chavez said the hospital system is following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and is allowing mask reuse when not soiled. She said on Tuesday the system has “appropriate Personal Protective Equipment to protect our teams.”
On Wednesday, CherryMay’s hospital hadn’t seen a surge of COVID19 cases. But she worried there won’t be enough beds and ventilators to cope if it arrives.
“Of course there’s always hope, but what I’ve seen around the world in areas that are just as competent and able as California to produce these supplies and get hold of them, it’s frightening,” CherryMay said. “I sincerely hope we have enough ventilators to take care of patients, but based on other areas with large populations, that doesn’t seem to be the case.” San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Alexei Koseff contributed to this
report.