Rare look at stockpile handouts shows which states got ventilators, masks amid coronavirus

Dinah Voyles Pulver and Erin Mansfield, USA TODAY Network
·7 min read

More than half the nearly 8,000 ventilators the federal stockpile sent to states to fight the coronavirus pandemic went to New York, while the rest were split among 14 other states and territories, a report from the federal government shows.

The report was released Wednesday by the U.S. House Oversight Committee amid criticism from its chairwoman that states with the biggest COVID-19 problems didn’t get enough supplies.

It gives the nation its closest look yet at how the Strategic National Stockpile distributed much-needed ventilators, N95 respirators, surgical masks and other protective equipment across the country since the pandemic began.

The stockpile, which is operated within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, distributed the ventilators based on requests from areas with high case counts.

New York received 4,400 ventilators. The remaining 3,520 went to places like New Jersey, Washington, Michigan, Illinois and Florida.

Shipments of other personal protective equipment — like masks, gloves, face shields and gowns — were allocated on a per capita basis after hospitals reported critical shortages. States with the fewest cases of coronavirus got the biggest per capita distributions of supplies, a USA TODAY Network analysis found.

Alaska and Wyoming, for example, each received more than 70,000 of the N95 respirator masks thought to be the best protection for medical workers, the report shows. Neither state had more than 230 cases by Thursday, according to the latest figures by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than 300 respirators for each COVID-19 patient.

Meanwhile, the state of New York — with upwards of 150,000 people testing positive and hospitals desperate for supplies — received just seven N95 masks per coronavirus patient.

New York had more cases than 40 other states combined, Thursday’s CDC data showed. Those states got a total of more than 7.6 million N95 masks, while New York received around 1.1 million. New York City alone had requested double that number from the stockpile.

Maria Leta, who works in kitchen services at Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla, was among nurses and staff members who called for adequate protective equipment during a protest outside Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla April 9, 2020. Nurses also called for more ventilators, adequate staffing, and better ventilation and HEPA filters for all COVID-19 areas in the hospital.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly begged the federal government for more supplies, estimating his state would need 30,000 ventilators. U.S. President Trump has questioned that number.

"We’ll need what we need," Cuomo said at a briefing last week. "I have no desire to acquire more ventilators than we need."

Although the pandemic sparked the demand for medical supplies, hospitals can use them to treat all patients, not just those infected with the coronavirus.

In total, the federal government sent the following supplies to U.S. states and territories between mid-March and early April:

  • 11.7 million N95 masks

  • 26.5 million surgical masks

  • 5.3 million face shields

  • 4.4 million surgical gowns

  • 22.6 million gloves

  • 7,920 ventilators

The numbers of what was actually distributed have raised fears among stakeholders that states and medical providers will continue to face shortages of critical equipment to keep patients and medical workers alive.

The distributions depleted about 90% of the stockpile’s supplies of personal protective equipment. The remaining 10% is reserved for the protection of federal workers.

“It appears that the administration is leaving states to fend for themselves, to scour the open market for these scarce supplies, and to compete with each other and federal agencies in a chaotic, free-for-all bidding war,” New York Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, said in a statement Wednesday.

Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency distributed supplies in the “most equitable way possible for a nationwide response taking into account population and need for areas of high transmission,” said a department official who declined to be identified without authorization.

Efforts to procure additional supplies are underway, according to Health and Human Services, which received $16 billion in the federal coronavirus relief plan to restock critical supplies including masks, respirators and pharmaceuticals.

The department has awarded contracts to buy another 600 million N95 respirators over the next 18 months and has ordered additional ventilators and protective suits.

First-of-its-kind peek at stockpile

This is the first time such an accounting of the stockpile has been made publicly available. Even members of Congress have struggled to obtain such a list.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who chairs a House appropriations committee subcommittee overseeing the stockpile’s annual budget, said she tried for weeks to get a list of supplies available from and distributed by the stockpile.

Instead she learned about the list from a USA TODAY Network reporter on Wednesday.

“It has been an unending series of stonewalling, obfuscation and essentially not a willingness to give us any report about what’s happening,” said DeLauro, a Democrat.

What’s in the stockpile and where it’s going should be “very simple questions,” DeLauro said. “I don’t want you to give me proprietary information. Tell us what you have and what you needed and where it’s going. These are very simple questions.”

In late-March, hospitals across the country were running out of the crucial respirators and other supplies they needed not only to protect staff while treating coronavirus patients, but also to protect other patients with infectious diseases, immune disorders, undergoing chemotherapy or being treated in an emergency room.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo shows how bag valve masks can help patients suffering from respiratory problems due to coronavirus, but they are less effective than ventilators. He spoke during a press conference in the Red Room at the State Capitol in Albany on Saturday, March 28, 2020.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo shows how bag valve masks can help patients suffering from respiratory problems due to coronavirus, but they are less effective than ventilators. He spoke during a press conference in the Red Room at the State Capitol in Albany on Saturday, March 28, 2020.

Supplies had plummeted nationwide, in part because companies had shipped supplies to other countries hit first by coronavirus and in part because imports dropped as manufacturers in China were hit by the coronavirus. Meanwhile demand skyrocketed as countries across the globe scrambled to stock up.

That’s when the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology surveyed more than 1,100 health care facilities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 20% reported having no N95 respirators and another 28% said they were almost out. The survey also noted shortages of face shields and other masks.

Ann Marie Pettis, the association’s president elect, said the flow of supplies had “not functioned how one would expect and how it needed to function.”

“When this is over, it’s going to be a huge focus,” she said. “We really need to get to the bottom of how we could have improved that."

Funding woes

In addition to DeLauro, Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican, also expressed concern this week about the stockpile’s available supplies and distribution. Both serve on the subcommittee on labor, health and human services, education and related services.

“We need to have a rational way to distribute limited resources in times of crisis,” Cole said. “Americans are actually pretty good in a crisis but it would help to have more of a system in place.”

The pandemic has raised the question of what’s in the stockpile and whether it was enough, Cole said, adding that the issue “needs to get more attention at all levels.”

Consistent increases to the stockpile’s budget over the past five years have been completely bi-partisan, he said.

The stockpile’s budget reached a high of $596 million in 2010, then dropped year after year until reaching a low of $477 million in 2013. Much of the funding was restored the following year, but the budget stayed flat at about $575 million through 2018 – the same year it was transferred from the CDC to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

The 2020 budget appropriation was $705 million.

“There is never enough money there for everything,” said Deborah Levy, chair of epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, who oversaw the stockpile as acting division director under the CDC in 2013-2014, in an interview with the USA TODAY Network last week.

“You need to decide what the threat is, what the cost is, what can be negotiated with companies,” Levy said at the time.

Both Cole and DeLauro said they have questions about the distributions to the states.

DeLauro said one of her constituents had called her Wednesday — one of the many expressing fear about the inadequate supply of personal protective equipment. This time it was a local fire chief asking if he could “just vent,” she said.

“He said ‘I can’t get any of this protective equipment, and my people are going in and out of facilities,’” DeLauro said. He told her he was at his “wit’s end.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rare look at stockpile shows which states got supplies amid COVID