90% of PPE Stockpile Depleted After Months of Admin Delays

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A House Oversight Committee report revealed that 90% of the federal personal protective equipment (PPE) stockpile has been depleted, and the rest will be “reserved for federal workers” rather than distributed to the states.

The news follows months of President Trump publicly downplaying the crisis and dragging his feet on invoking the Defense Protection Act (DPA) to make private companies efficiently produce ventilators and PPE for the federal government, even after the administration knew in mid-January that the nation’s supply of N95 masks was deficient. 

“Since the start of this crisis, President Trump has been asleep at the wheel — and states are the ones forced to brace for impact,” said Accountable.US President Kyle Herrig. “Trump ignored warnings about the severity of the threat of COVID-19 from the beginning, and now the national stockpile is nearly empty. Trump had the time and the tools to prepare our nation, yet he squandered them both. The administration needs to step up and give states the support they need.”

The Trump administration has distributed just 11.7 million N95 respirator masks and 7,920 ventilators to the states — far fewer than are needed. Governor Andrew Cuomo expressed a need for almost four times that number of ventilators for New York alone. And despite President Trump’s repeated claims that the administration has offered states all the support and resources they need for the crisis, many hard-hit regions are rationing critical medical equipment.

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