How Obama’s failure to resupply respirators in federal stockpile created a 2020 crisis. The stockpile’s 100 million supply of N95 respirator masks was never fully replenished after 2009 swine flu pandemic, experts say.
The Strategic National Stockpile, America’s giant medical storage closet for a terrorist or biological crisis, once boasted more than 100 million respirator masks to protect doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers in case of a contagion.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic started a few months ago, the supply had dwindled down to just 12 million fitted masks, known as N95 respirators, and 30 million surgical masks, a supply deemed to be less than 2 percent of what the nation would need for full-blown pandemic.
The tale of how such a critical supply lapsed, leading the Trump administration to scramble for 500 million new masks in the midst of pandemic, is one of government neglect and competing priorities that began in 2009.
Flashback: The Obama-Biden Administration Repeatedly Sought Millions in CDC Cuts.
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