Federal Stockpile Of N95 Masks Were Depleted Under Obama — Never Restocked: Reports

Across the nation, personal protective equipment (PPEs) for health care workers is in short supply. 

And one of the most needed PPEs that health care providers need is N95 respirator masks.

The mainstream media has been hounded President Trump at his daily briefings, demanding to know why there’s a shortage of masks.

“The national shortage can be traced back to 2009 after the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, when the Obama administration was advised to replenish a national stockpile but did not, according to reports from Bloomberg News and the Los Angeles Times,” The Washington Examiner writes.

The George W. Bush administration published the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza plan in 2005, which called on the federal government to distribute medical supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile governed by the Health and Human Services [HHS] Department in the event of an outbreak. In 2009, the H1N1 outbreak hit the United States, leading to 274,304 hospitalizations, 12,469 deaths, and a depletion of N95 respirator masks.

A federally backed task force and a safety equipment organization both recommended to the Obama administration that the stockpile be replenished of the 100 million masks used after the H1N1 outbreak, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Association, said that advice was never heeded. “Our association is unaware of any major effort to restore the stockpile to cover that drawdown,” he said.

Last month, HHS Secretary Alex Azar there were 12 million N95 masks available in the stockpile, “a tiny fraction of the 3.5 billion masks one of Azar’s deputies later testified the nation’s healthcare system would need,” the Los Angeles Times noted.

Bloomberg News reported similar findings last week, noting, “after the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, which triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and caused a 2- to 3-year backlog orders for the N95 variety, the stockpile distributed about three-quarters of its inventory and didn’t build back the supply.” Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration had asked construction companies to “donate their inventory of N95 masks to your local hospital and forgo additional orders of those industrial masks” and the Defense Department would provide 5 million N95 masks and 2,000 ventilators to help bridge the gap.

The Trump campaign slammed the campaign of Joe Biden for pushing falsehoods about masks.

“Trying to score political points in the middle of a public health crisis, the Biden campaign has repeatedly pushed the “misleading” claim that the Trump Administration dissolved an anti-pandemic office on the National Security Council,” the Trump campaign said. “This misinformation has earned a fact check from the Washington Post and FactCheck.org, as well as pushback from numerous former NSC officials who have said it’s simply not true.”