The federal government continues to abdicate its duty to assist in the source of this essential protective equipment.
The federal government continues to abdicate its duty to assist in the source of this essential protective equipment.
Hard to get.
Photo: Angus Mordant / Bloomberg
Hard to get.
Photo: Angus Mordant / Bloomberg
Photo: Angus Mordant / Bloomberg
Last week, six months after the start of a pandemic that killed more than 185,000 Americans, the American Nurses Association published the effects of a survey of its members, in which it wondered whether nurses were still suffering from shortages of non-public protective appliances or PPE.
The answer was a resounding yes. ” A third said there were or were no N95 respirators designed to provide maximum coverage in a hospital setting, according to Bloomberg News. (They’re called N95 because they remove 95% of the particles in the air, adding viruses. )
At the beginning of the pandemic, N95 masks were so rare that hospital staff reused them for days, following the correct protocol of discarding them after single use. Nearly 60% of the nurses surveyed said they “reused single-use protective devices for five days or more, and 68% said their amenities require reuse of supplies,” Bloomberg said.
When I emailed a high-level manager at the hospital asking if the shortage of masks had subsided, she sent me a one-line response: “The source chain is still very bad and can’t get N95. “
How can he? The initial shortage of N95 in March and April is more or less understandable. According to 3M Co. , the largest mask manufacturer in the United States, demand for N95 has not only doubled or tripled as a result of the pandemic; has multiplied through 40. Hospitals needed it, as did dental practices, long-term care centers, Covid-19 control sites, and many other facilities.
Today, the steady rate of 3M in the United States is one billion naira, consistent with the year. Worldwide, they are expected to be produced at a rate of 2 billion consistent with the year until the end of 2020. The company also imported tens of millions of N95s from its services in China from an agreement with President Donald Trump, who invoked the Defense Production Act. Honeywell International Inc. also manufactures N95 for the U. S. market, as does a handful of other companies.
However, hospitals and other entities, in addition to state governments, have almost as much difficulty obtaining N95 as they did at the beginning of the pandemic. Scarcity has not subsided. The N95 black market spot is as dynamic as ever. States still compete for the mask font. Counterfeit and low quality mask are sold as something genuine (although 3M has worked hard to get rid of the market site of the fake 3M mask). The only explanation The reason this is not a more serious challenge is that the influx of patients hospitalized by Covid-19 has decreased, but if the pandemic has a momentary wave in the fall, as many fear, it will become ugly again.
Consider the scenario in Minnesota: The state has orders for more than five million N9five, which it hopes to assign to hospitals that want it. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, it has won only 337,000 masks through classic 3M dealers.
Minnesota hired Link Inc. , a small Ohio company, for another 2 million N95s, so it agreed to pay $4. 75 each, or $9. 5 million in total. Matthew Kaspar, president of Supply Link, told me that the company had lined up the purchase, signed a sales agreement, and found that financiers paid the advance, which the law prevented. “I actually had Minnesota on the phone with the so-called distributor,” said Melissa Hill, Supply Link manager at the dealer, relying on government officials that everything was on the rise.
That’s not the case. When four trucks were sent to the warehouse that intended to involve the masks, Supply Link discovered that it was sterile. “It’s a very dark market,” Hill said, “The company’s delight is typical of scams that take over the black N95 Wayne Waslaski, a Minnesota Department of Public Safety official, told me that he now believes the state is unlikely to ever see the two million masks, but Hill and Kaspar insist they won’t avoid looking for them to dig them. Up.
Minnesota knows where another 500,000 N95 masks reside: in a warehouse in China, where they have been immobilized for more than 3 months. The U. S. government, which refused to import them. What about the cause of the problem: the Trump administration?
Basically, it will be years before the huge hole between the N95 source and the call to narrow in the United States. Before the pandemic, hospitals did not use them much, even for maximum surgical procedures; A typical hospital can go through a few thousand a month, rather than the burdens of thousands you now want each month. Globalization has boosted the brands of maximum masks, and once the virus arrived, few countries were willing to allow the export of N95. with such a shortage of sources, it was inevitable that black traders and criminals would seek credit for others who wanted to buy masks. None of this is surprising; markets don’t work as well when the source and demand are so unbalanced.
What was intended to happen in March, and still wants it to happen, is that the federal government deserves to use the Defense Production Act to take the N95 market, only she has the strength to negotiate mask agreements with countries like China and China. Vietnam. This may have sent a vital message by punishing scammers and value counterfeiters. You may have used other civic corporations besides 3M to start producing N95. And you may have only assigned N95 (and other PPE for that matter) to states, hospitals, and nursing homes as needed, by moving mask shipments from the states where coronavirus cases were decreasing and to emerging hot spots. effect on the country.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency insists it did just that, but the effort was negligible. Minnesota, for example, won 3,000 federal government pathetic masks. Moreover, as the Associated Press noted in July, “low-population, basically rural states”– that is, red states — achieved better results through FEMA than the more populous states that have been most affected by the virus. “For example, Montana won 1,125 pieces of protective devices compatible with the [Covid-19 confirmed] case, compared to 32 pieces consistent with the case in Massachusetts, one of the first hot spots,” the AP wrote. A consistent FEMA spokesman conson said the PPE” uniformly distributed “between states.
But the federal government also deviats its own inventory of imported masks that hospitals had already paid for. He turned away while the N95 market has become the Wild West. And the FDA, in particular, has made it incredibly difficult to import N95 masks, even with intelligent faith, made abroad.
Donaldson Company Inc. , a filtration company founded in the suburbs of Minneapolis, is the company looking to bring those 500,000 masks from China. It has air filtration laboratories around the world, in addition to China. Although the company doesn’t delight in the N95s, it has raised its hand to help Minnesota unload them. Scammers in China invaded the entire company and, very soon, used their labs basically to stumble upon fraudulent N95s. “We probably store millions of dollars in the state by getting rid of bad mask purchases,” CEO Tod Carpenter told me.
Finally, Donaldson discovered a valid manufacturer in China and established a supply chain. The company purchased 500,000 masks that it said met the FDA’s emergency approval needs for the pandemic. These were the masks Donaldson intended to sell to the state, at a cost, Carpenter said.
After testing them, and confirming that the Chinese company had mandatory registration from his government, Donaldson asked the FDA to take them to the United States. The company said no; The application had to come from the manufacturer. The Chinese company filed an application directly. Again, the FDA said no because its registration was temporary. When the Chinese company received its permanent registration, it tried once again. Guess what? The FDA said no.
“We’re scratching our heads here, ” said Carpenter. ” We’re a filtering company. We have labs. We know how to do that. Just tell us what we want to do. But the FDA will not contact Carpenter because, according to its rules, it can only communicate those problems with the manufacturer, not the distributor. Although Donaldson is still looking for tactics to present his case to the FDA, it’s a dead end.
At the Republican convention, Trump boasted of sending “hundreds of millions of masks, gloves and gowns to our frontline fitness workers. “Having spent some time researching the world of PPE, the next story is more believable. Rhode Island a few months ago, after Gov. Gina Raimondo begged FEMA for hospital devices in the federal arsenal.
“I’d only have the whirlwind all the time,” he told Politico. He continued: “Once I was promised, “Okay, it’ll be there today, a full EPI truck. “I said, “Tell me the time. , I’ll check it myself. ” They said 7 p. M. Great. 7:00 p. M. , No truck. I call and ask where he is, they say at 9 p. m. M. Well, around 9 p. m. , the truck has arrived. Hallelujah! I called my fitness director”. Good news, the truck has arrived in spite of everything!””
Then they opened the truck. It’s empty.
One of Agents Brian Kolfage, the decorated veteran who lost a leg and arm in Iraq in 2004 last month, was one of the defendants, along with Steve Bannon and two others, through the Justice Department, who accused them of embezzlement. cash raised to build a wall on the Mexican border for non-public purposes.
This column necessarily reflects the perspectives of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To play this story: Joe Nocera in jnocera3@bloomberg. net
To play the editor of this story: Daniel Niemi in dniemi1@bloomberg. net