Trump administration officials defended on Thursday their efforts to shore up the supplies of personal protective equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile after not meeting a stated goal of 300 million masks back in May.
Administration officials pushed back on a report from the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that the stockpile held 142 million N95 masks back in mid-November. The report comes as COVID-19 surges across the country and some providers have faced shortages of other types of PPE such as gloves.
“The goal of the stockpile is to ensure that hospitals on an emergency basis do not run out of supplies,” said Paul Mango, HHS deputy chief of staff for policy, on a call with reporters. “We have 10 times or greater more supplies on hand than we had in January.”
HHS officials said that they have contracts to resupply 790 million N95 masks through October 2021 and that they have 180 to 200 million N95 masks on the shelves now.
Officials added they are working to increase supplies of other types of PPE such as isolation gowns and gloves.
“We do have constraints in the glove market,” said Brigadier General David Sanford, the director of the supply chain task force. The stockpile has gone from “16 million to over 190 million by the end of this week.”
Gloves have overtaken N95 masks as the PPE item most in shortage by health systems due in part to only a few overseas manufacturers dominating the market, according to an October survey from the health improvement company Premier.
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Sanford added that the stockpile has not denied any state request yet and that hospitals and nursing homes need to coordinate with states to submit requests for resources.
He said the stockpile now has an IT system that uses analytics to analyze and identify the locations of shortages and supply constraints.
Mango denied the Wall Street Journal’s report that the federal government has yet to create a centralized database to distribute supplies to providers.
“We do have a centralized database and much deeper insight,” he said.
He added that health systems have become more efficient in using PPE, including recycling and reprocessing single-use items such as N95 masks. However, nurses' unions have objected to reprocessing because the equipment was not intended to be used more than once.
However, a Nov. 30 report from the federal watchdog Government Accountability Office said that shortages of certain supplies still linger.
GAO surveyed public health and emergency management officials across the country back in October and found that a majority of states were able to fulfill requests to supply organizations but constraints with gloves remain.