Trump official admits: 'Many months' until US can manufacture enough PPE - Washington Examiner

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency informed House lawmakers that the government and private sector still lack enough personal protective equipment such as face masks and gloves to get through the coronavirus pandemic.

“This isn’t as simple as throwing on a light switch and we just magically make more. We still have many months to go before we start making enough in the U.S. to supply the demand,” FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor told the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday. “We have a ways to go in making sure we have enough PPE.”

To date, the U.S. government has delivered to private and public sector workers 81 million N95 respirators, 746 million surgical masks, 329 million surgical gowns, and 19 billion gloves, Gaynor said. However, Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said members of Congress have been told by hospitals in their districts that they are short on PPE as the number of cases surges nationwide.

The FEMA chief blamed it on the more than 150 countries, as well as 50 states and U.S. territories, fighting for the same masks and equipment and the United States's inability to stand up enough manufacturing centers since March.

“We make virtually no rubber gloves in the U.S. as an example. We are in competition still for PPE around the globe,” said Gaynor. “The place we are in today is much better than we were 60 days ago, although we’re not going to buy our way out of this with just money. We’re going to have to improve the industrial base to make these critical items in the U.S. so we’re not at the whim of our global competitors.”

FEMA’s role is not to supply hospitals or state governments in need directly, but to connect them to supply chains if U.S. companies or local governments are unable to find what they need elsewhere. FEMA does not supply local, state, or tribal governments with coronavirus test kits but said the U.S. “can use more tests.”

Although the Trump administration has pushed for students to return to school in the fall, Gaynor said FEMA does not plan to reimburse schools for the cost of PPE.

Rather than questioning Gaynor, Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat, rhetorically asked the Trump official to consider the human toll it will take to come out on the other side of the pandemic.

“We have a president that has talked about injecting persons with disinfectant, who has indicated that the virus will simply disappear, a president who won’t wear the mask that you just said we ought to wear,” said Green. “I respect you, and I believe you’re sincere, but when the president of the United States of America won’t wear the mask that you and I know will protect people and save lives, you have to ask, ‘At what cost?’"

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