For health care workers, the N95 mask is an invaluable line of defense against the novel coronavirus. These highly protective respirators can keep doctors and nurses from getting infected by their patients, but the world is quickly running out of them. While global production is ramping up, the shortage of N95 masks is so great that companies, unions, and even average people are scrambling to fill the need. And now, after a number of fortuitous events, millions of N95 masks are appearing in mysterious or unexpected places.
The latest discovery comes from the Service Employees International Union’s medical workers division (SEIU-UHW). After an extensive search, the union found a distributor with a supply of 39 million respirators that it plans to sell to hospitals nationwide. The situation is more complicated than connecting a buyer and a seller, though. The SEIU has refused to name the distributor, apparently out of concern that the company would be overwhelmed, and one of the hospitals that considered buying the N95 masks through the union seems to have walked away from the deal.
“This is the Wild West,” SEIU-UHW president Dave Regan told the Washington Post. “There are a lot of good actors and a lot of shady actors.”
It’s great news that more N95 masks are being unearthed. Improving access to personal protective equipment (PPE) stands to save the lives of health care workers treating patients with Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reportedly considers recommending that everyone cover their faces in public, the N95 shortage could become even more severe as more people seek out the precious respirators.
While discoveries of thousands or millions of lifesaving masks are good news in a pandemic, they also draw attention to a supply chain that’s been badly mismanaged. The situation also raises the question of why unions, banks, tech companies, and others have taken it upon themselves to find masks for health care workers. Shouldn’t the federal government be dealing with this?
What makes N95 masks so hard to find
Certified N95 respirators are special. Unlike a conventional surgical mask, N95 masks are built so that 95 percent of very small airborne particles can’t get through. These masks also need to be approved by the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and, depending on the type, the Food and Drug Administration. In order to fulfill those requirements, N95 masks must be constructed so that they seal tightly around one’s mouth and nose, unlike surgical or cloth masks which are loose-fitting. (...)
Why companies keep discovering N95 masks in stockpiles
Many companies and organizations are purchasing masks for the specific purpose of donating them to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. However, others are offering up N95 masks that were being kept in storage. Reasons vary as to why so many companies have these high-end respirators stashed away in warehouses.
Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, recently said that Facebook was donating 720,000 N95 masks that were purchased following the wildfires in California last year. He added that the company was “also working on sourcing millions more to donate.”
Currently, California emergency regulations require that when air quality worsens by a significant amount, workplaces must take steps to ensure their workers have respiratory protection, like N95 masks, if other adjustments can’t be made. The change in regulation came following the catastrophic 2018 California wildfires. The same regulation suggests that a good number of other California employers also have N95 masks on hand. (...)
Then there are more cases of discovered masks with mysterious origins, much like the SEIU’s huge stockpile. For instance, one major N95 donation has come from Apple. The company’s CEO Tim Cook tweeted that his company had “sourced, procured, and is donating” 10 million masks, though it’s not immediately clear why the company had access to so many masks. Vice President Pence had said earlier last week that Apple would be donating 9 million N95 masks from its “storehouses.” Still, Apple would not comment on why the company had these masks in supply.
by Rebecca Heilweil, Recode | Read more: (Millions of N95 masks keep surfacing. So why is there still a shortage?)
The buyers—from state government purchasing departments and hospital systems representing facilities throughout the Northeast, Midwest and California—expressed desperation for masks to protect their healthcare workers, but in the end not a single deal was completed with any of these groups, and millions of masks were earmarked to leave the country, purchased by foreign buyers.
In the interest of brevity, I’m going to summarize what I learned below and then jump into a bit more detail.
“This is the craziest market I’ve ever seen,” he told me between calls while scanning through a stream of text messages from sellers and other brokers. (...)
When contacting potential buyers, Remington needs two things to secure a deal with a seller: a letter of intent to purchase and proof of funds.
“If you are working with a seller who has masks but you can’t quickly show proof of funds, someone else is going to buy them,” he told me.
And I watched that happen repeatedly throughout the day. Buyers from state procurement departments and hospital systems expressed desperate need for masks, but the deals bogged down when it came to providing proof that they could commit and follow through. In the meantime, another buyer provided proof of funds and the masks were gone, sometimes within the hour.
The masks in play are those we’ve been hearing about in every press conference since the pandemic began: N95 3M™ brand masks, mainly in model types 1860 and 8210, which, according to 3M™, are “NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health) approved for at least 95% filtration efficiency against certain non-oil based particles.” Some buyers are also looking for alcohol-based sanitizer sprays, hospital gowns and a few other items, but mostly the demand is for N95 masks. And the demand is only getting more intense as hospitals rapidly run low on the supplies they have due to increased need for masks to protect staff as numbers of COVID-19 infections, and suspected infections, increase each day.
by David DiSalvo, Forbes | Read more: (I Spent A Day In The Coronavirus-Driven Feeding Frenzy Of N95 Mask Sellers And Buyers And This Is What I Learned)
[ed. See also: Everyone Thinks They’re Right About Masks (The Atlantic).]
The latest discovery comes from the Service Employees International Union’s medical workers division (SEIU-UHW). After an extensive search, the union found a distributor with a supply of 39 million respirators that it plans to sell to hospitals nationwide. The situation is more complicated than connecting a buyer and a seller, though. The SEIU has refused to name the distributor, apparently out of concern that the company would be overwhelmed, and one of the hospitals that considered buying the N95 masks through the union seems to have walked away from the deal.
“This is the Wild West,” SEIU-UHW president Dave Regan told the Washington Post. “There are a lot of good actors and a lot of shady actors.”It’s great news that more N95 masks are being unearthed. Improving access to personal protective equipment (PPE) stands to save the lives of health care workers treating patients with Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reportedly considers recommending that everyone cover their faces in public, the N95 shortage could become even more severe as more people seek out the precious respirators.
While discoveries of thousands or millions of lifesaving masks are good news in a pandemic, they also draw attention to a supply chain that’s been badly mismanaged. The situation also raises the question of why unions, banks, tech companies, and others have taken it upon themselves to find masks for health care workers. Shouldn’t the federal government be dealing with this?
What makes N95 masks so hard to find
Certified N95 respirators are special. Unlike a conventional surgical mask, N95 masks are built so that 95 percent of very small airborne particles can’t get through. These masks also need to be approved by the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and, depending on the type, the Food and Drug Administration. In order to fulfill those requirements, N95 masks must be constructed so that they seal tightly around one’s mouth and nose, unlike surgical or cloth masks which are loose-fitting. (...)
Why companies keep discovering N95 masks in stockpiles
Many companies and organizations are purchasing masks for the specific purpose of donating them to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. However, others are offering up N95 masks that were being kept in storage. Reasons vary as to why so many companies have these high-end respirators stashed away in warehouses.
Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, recently said that Facebook was donating 720,000 N95 masks that were purchased following the wildfires in California last year. He added that the company was “also working on sourcing millions more to donate.”
Currently, California emergency regulations require that when air quality worsens by a significant amount, workplaces must take steps to ensure their workers have respiratory protection, like N95 masks, if other adjustments can’t be made. The change in regulation came following the catastrophic 2018 California wildfires. The same regulation suggests that a good number of other California employers also have N95 masks on hand. (...)
Then there are more cases of discovered masks with mysterious origins, much like the SEIU’s huge stockpile. For instance, one major N95 donation has come from Apple. The company’s CEO Tim Cook tweeted that his company had “sourced, procured, and is donating” 10 million masks, though it’s not immediately clear why the company had access to so many masks. Vice President Pence had said earlier last week that Apple would be donating 9 million N95 masks from its “storehouses.” Still, Apple would not comment on why the company had these masks in supply.
***
You never know what a new day will bring. What started as an early morning call with a friend to help get N95 masks to hospitals in desperate need turned into a roller coaster of contacts in a frenzied, pandemic-driven market. For the next 10 hours, I sat in on calls between brokers selling masks and potential buyers, watching the psychology of market pressures play out in real time as millions of masks changed hands in a matter of hours. The buyers—from state government purchasing departments and hospital systems representing facilities throughout the Northeast, Midwest and California—expressed desperation for masks to protect their healthcare workers, but in the end not a single deal was completed with any of these groups, and millions of masks were earmarked to leave the country, purchased by foreign buyers.
In the interest of brevity, I’m going to summarize what I learned below and then jump into a bit more detail.
- Millions of N95 masks have been available throughout the U.S., Canada and the UK during the pandemic, according to brokers trying to sell them.
- The high price point per mask, driven by extreme demand, has contributed to an overwhelmed reaction among potential buyers, especially in the U.S.
- Scrutiny surrounding these deals is high because of ongoing scams and claims of price-gouging, both of which are triggering emotionally charged reactions and fear of making deals.
- Millions of masks are being purchased by foreign buyers and are leaving the country, according to the brokers, while the domestic need remains alarmingly high.
“This is the craziest market I’ve ever seen,” he told me between calls while scanning through a stream of text messages from sellers and other brokers. (...)
When contacting potential buyers, Remington needs two things to secure a deal with a seller: a letter of intent to purchase and proof of funds.
“If you are working with a seller who has masks but you can’t quickly show proof of funds, someone else is going to buy them,” he told me.
And I watched that happen repeatedly throughout the day. Buyers from state procurement departments and hospital systems expressed desperate need for masks, but the deals bogged down when it came to providing proof that they could commit and follow through. In the meantime, another buyer provided proof of funds and the masks were gone, sometimes within the hour.
The masks in play are those we’ve been hearing about in every press conference since the pandemic began: N95 3M™ brand masks, mainly in model types 1860 and 8210, which, according to 3M™, are “NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health) approved for at least 95% filtration efficiency against certain non-oil based particles.” Some buyers are also looking for alcohol-based sanitizer sprays, hospital gowns and a few other items, but mostly the demand is for N95 masks. And the demand is only getting more intense as hospitals rapidly run low on the supplies they have due to increased need for masks to protect staff as numbers of COVID-19 infections, and suspected infections, increase each day.
Image: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
