MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-12-09 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] The shortage of emergency healthcare supplyand
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What is the government actually doing? Nothing...
wsj.com
WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Supplies of Covid-19 PPE Fall Short of Targets
Stephanie Armour, Betsy McKay and Susan Pulliam
11-14 minutes
The federal government has fallen well short of its goal to shore up an
emergency stockpile of respirator masks and some other personal
protective equipment for health workers amid the current surge in
Covid-19 cases.
The Trump administration said in May it was aiming to increase its
emergency supply of N95 respirator masks to 300 million in the coming 90
days. It never met the goal; by mid-November, the U.S. Strategic
National Stockpile and the Federal Emergency Management Agency held 142
million N95 masks, which filter out at least 95% of small particles and
fit snugly to the face.
The U.S. also has yet to develop a centralized database to distribute
medical gear to all health providers. The Department of Health and Human
Services hasn’t adopted key recommendations to ease supply shortages
made in September by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A
federal crisis response program hasn’t reached its staffing goals for
health responders.
The predicament “underscores the critical imperative” for HHS and FEMA
to adopt September recommendations to address how it would deal with
supply shortages and help states track supply requests, according to a
new GAO report released Nov. 30.
*Includes the Strategic National Stockpile and Federal Emergency
Management Agency and delivered to state, territory and federal partners
Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
HHS disagreed with the need to follow GAO recommendations on handling
supply shortages. An HHS spokeswoman said some GAO proposals were vague,
outdated and based on incomplete data. She said HHS has filled all
supply requests made of the stockpile, that some states inflate their
needs and that there haven’t been directives to deploy N95 respirators
from the stockpile in the past 30 days.
A FEMA spokeswoman said the agency continues to work to “ensure the
necessary equipment and supplies” are supplied to states and others, and
that the federal government now has 164 million N95s available.
The White House said its preparations are exhaustive; spokesman Brian
Morgenstern said President Trump has used the Defense Production Act and
related authorities more than 100 times to get billions of PPE to every
part of the country.
Nevertheless, there is growing alarm among some public health and state
leaders about having enough medical gear to cope with a wave of cases
that is projected to roughly double the U.S. death toll, now at more
than 280,000, by February.
“There is still no centralized federal database for personal protective
equipment,” said Ali Raja, an emergency-room doctor who co-founded Get
Us PPE, a group that finds and delivers medical supplies to workers.
“The disconnect between what’s purported to be in the stockpile and the
needs on the front-line is astounding.”
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Get Us PPE has delivered more than three million pieces of personal
protective equipment since March. It still can’t meet about 85% of the
requests coming in as cases soar across the U.S.
“We don’t have the proper PPE,” said Shantonia Jackson, a certified
nursing assistant with SEIU Healthcare Illinois in Chicago. “We just
have the regular masks you can buy at Walmart,” she said, adding that
she has been unable to obtain respirator masks.
Some public health leaders and legislators said the stockpile didn’t
meet its target numbers partly because the White House didn’t take full
advantage of the Defense Production Act to sufficiently increase
domestic supply.
Last month, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) called on the
administration to use the act to provide more personal protective equipment.
Stockpiles of personal protective equipment supplies are stored on
shelves at the Henrico County Facility.
Photo: Eman Mohammed for The Wall Street Journal
There has been some progress. The stockpile, housed in warehouses around
the country, collects about 150 million N95 respirator masks a month
compared with about 20 million a month before the pandemic began in January.
“The American people should be assured,” said Brig. Gen. David Sanford,
deputy director of the supply chain task force. “The federal government
has learned. If a state needs something, they should request it and
we’ll get it to them.”
Yet problems persist. Some states say they haven’t been getting the PPE
they have requested from the federal government. Others say they have
received damaged goods. Still others have largely replaced efforts to
procure medical gear from the national stockpile with PPE from private
vendors.
Public health preparedness officials in Maine have made three recent
requests to the federal government, for nitrile gloves, pipette tips and
testing kits. All have gone unfilled or have been denied, said Robert
Long, communications director for the Maine Center for Disease Control
and Prevention. The agency hasn’t received any supplies from the
national stockpile or FEMA since midsummer, he said.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
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New Mexico requested gloves from FEMA months ago; they arrived last week
damaged by heat and couldn’t be used for medical procedures, according
to Marisa Maez, communications director for the state’s department of
health. The state turned to private vendors.
Washington state also has turned to private vendors. Casey Katims, an
aide to Gov. Jay Inslee, said the federal government has provided 11% of
Washington’s protective equipment supplies since the beginning of the
pandemic.
The supply of surgical gloves at Alabama’s Department of Health is
critically low, according to Dr. Karen Landers, assistant state health
officer. She says Alabama is expecting more gloves from FEMA soon. A
FEMA spokesman said an order for gloves was approved for shipment to
Alabama on Nov. 23.
Health workers in Albany, N.Y.; Chicago; Tacoma, Wash.; and Pennsylvania
have gone on strike in the past two weeks to protest insufficient
personal protective equipment. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat,
said states are trying to get by.
The challenges come as the Trump administration seeks to provide a
vaccine to everyone who wants it by June 2021. About one-third of states
said they were “greatly” or “completely” concerned about having
sufficient vaccine-related supplies to administer the Covid-19 shots,
according to the November GAO report.
States will get supplies such as syringes, needles, face masks and
shields with the vaccines, an HHS spokeswoman said. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention had sent $340 million to states to
support flu and Covid-19 vaccine planning, she said.
The Trump administration only recently began sharing information with
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team.
State leaders have said they need billions of dollars more for training,
recruitment, outreach, vaccine storage and related supplies.
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The CDC is working with HHS’s Joint Coordination Center to improve the
data quality on a system called HHS Protect Public Data Hub, which
alerts the federal government to supply and staffing shortages at
hospitals and nursing homes around the country, said Henry Walke,
incident manager for the CDC’s Covid-19 response.
CDC analysts are working on creating alerts that identify hospitals or
nursing homes that have reported a need for more masks, gowns, devices
for delivering supplemental oxygen and other supplies, he said.
The system is robust and more integrated, he said, but the “recent large
surge in cases and hospitalizations across the nation could strain it.
We’re very concerned.”
HHS Protect is limited. It tracks supply issues for hospitals and
nursing homes, and not personal protective equipment used and needed by
workers at urgent care centers, doctors’ offices or outpatient clinics.
Some 42% of nurses said they are still experiencing widespread or
intermittent personal equipment shortages, according to a September
survey by the American Nurses Association. Over half said they were
reusing masks such as N95 respirators for five or more days, a 15%
increase from May.
“America’s hospitals and health systems continue to have serious
concerns about PPE supply,” said Rick Pollack, president of the American
Hospital Association.
‘We need to rely on our creativity and not to rely on the state or
federal government,’ said Jackson Baynard, chief of emergency management
for Henrico County, Va.
Photo: Eman Mohammed for The Wall Street Journal
A federal backstop that sends relief health workers to Covid-19 hot
spots is also being stretched and never reached its staffing goals.
Because of a lack of workforce planning in the years before the
pandemic, the program has had “limited assurance that it is adequately
prepared to respond to public health emergencies,” according to a June
GAO report.
All this continues to leave some hospitals and counties scrambling to
make do as cases climb.
Jackson Baynard, chief of emergency management in Henrico County, Va.,
said his county has been forced to rely on nontraditional vendors to
obtain the necessary protective equipment for front-line workers.
“We need to rely on our creativity and not to rely on the state or
federal government to take care of our county,” he said.
Write to Stephanie Armour at stephanie.armour-at-wsj.com, Betsy McKay at
betsy.mckay-at-wsj.com and Susan Pulliam at susan.pulliam-at-wsj.com
--
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that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
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