US President Donald Trump may need to rethink styling himself as a ‘wartime president’. As per reports, Trump had not ordered essentials like ventilators and N95 masks until mid-March. First alarms, that outbreak of the coronavirus could turn into a global pandemic, were sounded in early January.
The Trump administration didn’t do much during the two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.
A review of federal purchasing contracts by the AP shows federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.
The US Department of Health and Human Services placed its first bulk order with multinational company 3M for masks worth $4.8 million. By then, hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were requesting shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile.
Nine days later a larger order for masks worth $173 million was ordered. By March 31, a stockpile including 11.6 million masks and around 16,600 ventilators were distributed to state and local governments.
As the federal stock of supplies was created more than 20 years ago, some state and local officials report receiving broken ventilators and decade-old dry-rotted masks.
“We basically wasted two months,” Kathleen Sebelius, health and human services secretary during the Obama administration, told AP.
As early as mid-January, reports showed that China’s Hubei province was overwhelmed with infected patients, with many left dependent on ventilator machines to breathe. Italy soon followed, with hospitals scrambling for doctors, beds and equipment.
By the middle of March, hospitals in New York, Seattle and New Orleans were reporting a surge in sick patients. Doctors and nurses took to social media to express their alarm at dwindling supplies of such basic equipment like masks and gowns.
Trump accused some Democratic governors of exaggerating the need and derided those that criticized the federal response as complainers and snakes. “I want them to be appreciative,” Trump said on March 27.
Trump, on March 27, also announced that he will make 100,000 ventilators in 100 days.
Much of the world’s supply of N95 masks and other basic medical supplies are made in China, the first nation to be hit by COVID-19. As a result, the Chinese government required its producers to reserve N95 respirators for domestic use. China resumed exports of the masks only in recent days.
Currently, US experts are worried that the US will soon exhaust its supply of ventilators, which can cost upward of $12,000 each.
Gregory F Trevorton, former chair of the National Intelligence Council, was quoted in a Washington Post report as saying, “This has been a real blow to the sense that America is competent. That was part of our global role. Traditional friends and allies looked to us because they thought we could be competently called upon to work with them in a crisis. This has been the opposite of that.”
