It's not just the vaccine - Biden has to solve to the crisis of PPE shortage
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- The Trump administration failed to secure sufficient PPE for the nation's frontline workers.
- By modernize the delivery process, the Biden administration can easily fix this.
- Shikha Gupta, MD, is the Executive Director of Get Us PPE.
- Matthew Wellington directs US PIRG's public health campaigns
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the authors.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
President Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20 generated a lot of noise - from speeches to songs to fireworks. But a much quieter sound, from places far away from the Capitol, was just as meaningful: the collective sigh of relief from health professionals and local officials across the country as the president signed executive orders to combat COVID-19.
As more than 400,000 Americans died from the coronavirus, the previous administration shirked its responsibilities, leaving state and local governments to fight for personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing supplies. That fragmented approach led to a chaotic marketplace rife with competition, price gouging and bad actors, and our families, friends and neighbors suffered as a result.
Over and over, local officials and health professionals begged the federal government to use its authority and resources to boost PPE production and to centrally coordinate the supply chain. Those calls fell on deaf ears.
In his first full day in office, Biden issued sweeping executive orders to finally put the federal government in the driver's seat of America's coronavirus response efforts. One of the most important orders invoked full use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up testing, produce PPE, and distribute and administer COVID-19 vaccines.
While much of the nation's spotlight is on vaccines, PPE shortages are still severe, especially in our most vulnerable communities. Biden's plan focuses on communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and those who were overlooked by the previous administration.
Biden's chance to fix this
The Biden administration has a lot of work to do to address the PPE crisis.
Firstly, it can correct widespread misconceptions around COVID-19 mitigation. Wearing masks and social distancing are still our best defense against COVID-19 during the vaccine rollout.
Secondly, the administration should organize equitable distribution of vaccines and PPE. New supply/demand matching technology such as Get Us PPE's Fair Distribution Algorithm transparently optimizes efficiency and equity to prioritize distributions of donated PPE to the highest-need recipients. Similar to Uber's rider/driver matching software, this tool could be used by states and the federal government to distribute PPE from the Strategic National Stockpile.
Finally, Biden should establish an online marketplace for PPE approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Since counterfeit PPE is pervasive and difficult to distinguish from medical-grade PPE, frontline workers need a trusted place to source safe equipment vetted by experts.
N95 respirator masks are considered liquid gold throughout the healthcare system because they're so effective at protecting the wearer from COVID-19. However, we have nowhere near an adequate supply in the US.
Some health professionals get one N95 mask per shift, which can sometimes last 16 hours, but others have to reuse the same N95 for up to a month. According to Get Us PPE's December 2020 data, a third of facilities that requested N95s had zero remaining.
With more contagious variants of COVID-19 spreading throughout the country, experts are now urging members of the public to wear medical-grade masks, including N95s, instead of cloth ones. That demand will stretch the current supply even further. President Biden should focus efforts on boosting the production of N95s so that health professionals and members of the public can get them.
Right now, medical-grade nitrile gloves are also in critically short supply and costs are skyrocketing, which could further hamper health professionals' ability to administer vaccines.
Requests for nitrile glove donations in Get Us PPE's database doubled between September and November 2020 and again between November and December. Suppliers say a box of 50 pairs of gloves that retailed for about $2.50 pre-pandemic now frequently sell for $18-$20. Ideally, vaccine workers should wear a new pair of nitrile gloves for each shot, so they need hundreds of millions of pairs for vaccination alone and billions for normal patient interactions.
Although the president's orders are a welcome game-changer, many of them still require funding from Congress. Federal lawmakers should immediately approve President Biden's requests, including $20 billion for a national vaccination program, $30 billion to boost PPE production and $50 billion to ramp up testing.
With a new president in charge, the United States has an opportunity to start over and tackle the coronavirus pandemic the right way this time.
Shikha Gupta, MD, is the Executive Director of Get Us PPE. Matthew Wellington directs US PIRG's public health campaigns.
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