Biden to Provide 400 Million N95 Masks for Free


WASHINGTON — Two years later coronavirus pandemicStruggling to get their hands on masks and home tests, Americans are suddenly showered with free offers, courtesy of taxpayers and the Biden administration, which has come under harsh criticism for not taking action before.

On Wednesday, management announced it would make 400 million non-surgical cash. N95 masks It is available free of charge at community health centers and retail pharmacies in the United States. The White House said there would be a limit of three masks per person to “grant broad access for all Americans.”

The news came a day after the administration was overthrown. covidtests.gov, new website Americans can order coronavirus tests at home Free.

Taken together, the moves represent an accelerated effort by the White House to fight back. Omicron, a fast-acting variant of the coronavirus that first emerged in November, causing an increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the country. But some public health experts said the efforts were welcomed but too late.

“If we had done it at the beginning of the Omicron surge or the beginning of the Delta surge, it wouldn’t have been as effective as it would have been,” said Julia Raifman, a health law and public policy expert at Boston University School of Public. Health.

The White House described the mask distribution as “the largest distribution of personal protective equipment in U.S. history.” Wednesday’s announcement came days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. updated the mask guide recognizing that cloth masks do not provide as much protection as surgical masks or respirators.

N95 masks will come from the Strategic National Stockpile, the nation’s emergency medical supplies reserve. Stock was badly depleted at the start of the pandemic, leaving healthcare workers without the masks and other personal protective equipment needed to fight the coronavirus. As late as December 2020, the United States is still facing worrying shortcomings personal protective equipment.

The decision to distribute masks from stock to the public is a sharp departure from the previous practice; In the past, it was reserved for healthcare workers.

Fully fitting respirators, including N95s, provide the highest level of protection, according to the CDC’s new mask definition. Their name refers to their ability to filter 95 percent of all airborne particles when used correctly.

This month, in a series of opinion articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association, six former advisors He called on President Biden’s transition team for a new pandemic strategy that includes making N95 masks free and easily accessible to all Americans, and drastically increasing the number of free coronavirus tests.

But Mr. Biden faced challenges, especially on the testing front. Its management had promised to increase its testing capacity, but did not do so until the Omicron variant appeared. Shortly before Christmas, when his administration announced that it would purchase 500 million rapid tests to distribute to the public for free, Americans had to wait for them.

Brown University School of Public Health dean Dr. “They talked a lot about scaling up testing significantly and it didn’t happen,” Ashish K. Jha said. “I think it was a real failure of the administration. , so that there are no more tests when we go on vacation.”

Last week, Mr Biden steps up testing initiative and its administration will buy 500 million more tests, bringing the total to one billion. Jeffrey D. Zients, the president’s coronavirus response coordinator, said: told reporters He said last week that the administration is “actively investigating” ways to make high-quality masks available.

Dr. Jha said distributing free high-quality masks can only “help at margins” because only a small minority of Americans are interested in wearing masks. Saying that the best mask is the one people will wear, CDC director Dr. He said he agreed with Rochelle Walensky.

The White House said on Wednesday that the government will begin shipping N95 masks to pharmacies and health centers later this week, with the masks expected to go on sale from next weekend. The statement said the program will be fully equipped in early February.

A Investigation from The New York Times Published in March 2021, the Strategic National Stockpile has for years focused on protecting against bioterrorist attacks; For most of the last decade, nearly half of its budget has been spent on the anthrax vaccine. At the same time, China’s half of the world’s masks before the coronavirus showed up there and the country was accumulating them.

Biden’s management has promised to fix shortfalls in stock. At a Senate hearing last week, Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary of preparedness and response in the Department of Health and Human Services, said that there are now 737 million N95 masks in stock, all from domestic manufacturers.

Lisa O’Connor, former head nurse of Boston Medical Center, said she was concerned that distributing stock holdings to the public would put healthcare workers at risk.

“This valuable resource should only be in the hands of healthcare providers who have been providing practice and guidance for 20 years,” said Ms. O’Connor, now a healthcare consultant at FTI Consulting.

But Ms O’Connell told senators last week that the government is seeking bids from companies that are capable of producing 141 million N95 masks a month in a crisis and can produce them at a much lower rate when demand is lower. .

The idea is for stocks to “maintain this capacity we have now,” “even when demand declines,” he said.



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