U.S. President Donald Trump holds a protective face mask with a presidential seal on it that he said he had been wearing earlier in his tour as Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Hackett looks on during a tour of the Ford Rawsonville Components Plant that is manufacturing ventilators, masks and other medical supplies during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Ypsilanti, Michigan, U.S., May 21, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis
The PPE stockpile that Trump bragged about at coronavirus briefings is almost gone, as the coronavirus is surging across the country.
The federal government may not have the capacity to supply medical professionals with personal protective equipment amid the latest surge in coronavirus cases, according to internal administration documents obtained by NBC News.
For example, the Strategic National Stockpile and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have fewer than 900,000 gloves in reserve after shipping 82.7 million of them — or just 30 percent of the amount requested by state, local and tribal governments — since the COVID-19 crisis began, according to figures compiled Sunday by Health and Human Services Department officials for senior leaders of the interagency coronavirus task force effort.
In particular, nursing homes and long-term care facilities say there is a major personal protective equipment shortage.
The federal PPE stockpile was never as great as Trump claimed, but also, Trump gave away part of the federal stockpile to foreign countries as he claimed that the US didn’t and wouldn’t need it.
The President was very wrong.
The administration is claiming that there is plenty of PPE, but doctors and hospitals are telling a much different story about a shortage that is getting worse by the day.
The fall second wave of the virus isn’t even here yet, but Donald Trump has the country in such sorry shape that those treating coronavirus patients don’t have the PPE that they need, even as the president pushes to reopen the country.
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