After a year of pandemic, the disposable N95 mask with virus filter remains a coveted piece of protection. The continuing shortage has forced doctors and nurses to reuse their N95s, and ordinary Americans have searched the internet – mostly in vain – to obtain them.
But Luis Arguello Jr. has a lot of N95 for sale – 30 million of them, in fact, that his family business, DemeTech, manufactured in his factories in Miami. He just can’t find buyers.
After the pandemic exposed a huge need for protective equipment and China closed its stock to the world, DemeTech, a manufacturer of medical sutures, plunged into the mask business. The company invested tens of millions of dollars in new machines and then went through a nine-month federal approval process that allows masks to be marketed.
But demand is so weak that Arguello is preparing to fire some of the 1,300 workers he hired to increase production.
“It’s crazy that we can’t bring these masks to people who desperately need them,” he said.
In one of the most confusing disconnects between supply and demand laws, many of the nearly two dozen small American companies that recently launched into the business of making N95s are facing the abyss – unable to break the market, despite votes from both ex -presidents Donald Trump and President Biden will “buy American food” and boost national production of essential medical equipment.
These companies must overcome the ingrained buying habits of hospital systems, medical supply distributors and state governments. Many buyers are reluctant to try the new crop of masks made in the United States, which are generally slightly more expensive than those produced in China. Another obstacle comes from companies like Facebook and Google, which have banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks in an effort to prevent profiteers from diverting the vital medical equipment needed by frontline medical workers.
What is needed, say public health experts and industry executives, is an ambitious strategy that includes federal loans, subsidies and government procurement guidelines to ensure the long-term viability of a domestic industry vital to the national interest.
“The government needs to call outsourcing America’s mask supply what it is: a national security problem,” said Mike Bowen, owner of Prestige Ameritech, a Texas mask maker, who testified before Congress about the need to support national manufacturers.
Drawing on his experiences during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, he said that many of the start-ups would be unlikely to survive without systemic changes. “We’ve seen this film before,” said Bowen, a 35-year industry veteran. “If and when the pandemic ends, it will be a bloody bloodbath.”
Partly spurred by the wartime Defense Production Act, domestic heavyweights like 3M and Honeywell increased the production of N95 masks last year, but the 120 million masks they produce each month in the United States do not. can meet the annual need of the health sector. 3.5 billion N95s. Most of the masks made by major players are channeled to medical distributors who supply the country’s major hospital systems.
Smaller companies can help bridge this gap. Together, 19 companies that recently received federal certification produce tens of millions of masks per month; Northwell Health, a large network of hospitals, has used a total of 300,000 masks a month in its 23 hospitals.
Businesses include Protective Health Gear, a New Jersey start-up founded by a chiropractor and a store window executive who has been struggling to find steady customers, and ALG Health, a lighting company that produces 1.5 million masks per month in Bryan, Ohio, but fails to get the final investment needed to meet its goal of producing 30 million a month.
Unlike his predecessor, Biden made facial coverage an essential component of his plan to contain the pandemic. In one of his first acts as president, Mr. Biden ordered federal agencies to aggressively use DPA to boost national manufacturing of personal protective equipment, and a subsequent executive order seeks to encourage government purchases of nationally manufactured goods. Still, none of the half-dozen new companies interviewed for this article said they were contacted by federal officials.
“I am excited about the initial steps of the Biden government,” said Scott Paul, president of Alliance for American Manufacturing, an industry group. “But the federal government really needs to step up its game and provide certainty to American companies that have responded to the national call to action, not just for this crisis, but for those in the future.”
Tim Manning, Covid-19 White House supply coordinator, said the government will announce a series of new DPA contracts for personal protective equipment in the coming weeks, but that broader supply chain issues would take longer to resolve. .
“One of our priorities in our response to the pandemic is to do this so that we can ensure that the expansion of the industrial base that happened can be sustained, so that we don’t end up in the same situation the next time,” said Manning. in an interview.
Companies like United States Mask, a start-up in Fort Worth, Texas, which started producing N95s in November, may not be able to resist much longer. John Bielamowicz, a commercial realtor who opened the company with a friend in the early weeks of the pandemic, said he was frustrated by the lack of interest in hospital chains, long-term care facilities and local governments that buy in bulk.
Although the company’s masks have been certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bielamowicz says many buyers are reluctant to try unknown products. Large hospitals prefer to use the masks they already use due to the time-consuming need to test new models on employees. But many cost-conscious bulk buyers prefer to buy the cheapest Chinese.
One of the most painful rejections came from Tarrant County, where the Bielamowicz factory is located. Last month, the county disqualified its company’s offer because the authorities wanted to buy specific Chinese-made models. County officials did not respond to requests for comment.
“We entered this business because we were concerned about America’s dependence on foreign manufacturing and we wanted to do something about it,” said Bielamowicz, whose masks sell for $ 2.25 a piece – a few cents more than those made in China. “Are we going to be left to die on the vine when we are making N95s at a competitive price?”
While maintaining hope for Washington intervention, the United States Mask and other N95 producers said the ability to sell to the public through online retailers like Amazon would help them stay afloat.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, said that the vast majority of Americans who have adopted masks and are concerned about the new variants would eagerly upgrade to N95s or other types of filter masks. of viruses if they were available.
“At the moment, high filtration masks are more important than ever,” she said.
The problem is getting consumers to access your retail sites. At the moment, anyone trying to buy N95 masks on Google Shopping or the Facebook Marketplace is greeted with a blank page; on Amazon, a search for N95s produces a confusion of sellers touting KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective. As of Wednesday, the site appeared to allow a handful of masks described as N95s, but not all were listed on the NIOSH website. Another included a disclaimer saying that wearing masks is not recommended for Covid-19.
Google and Facebook said they have no immediate plans to change their policies, which are based on guidance from the CDC and the World Health Organization to ensure that healthcare professionals have adequate protective equipment. Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.
Lance Brown, chief executive of Rhino Medical Supply, a South Carolina distributor, has focused exclusively on selling N95s produced by the new generation of American entrepreneurs. Their masks, he said, are superior to most made in China, but their appeals to national pride often fail to motivate institutional buyers who focus on financial results.
Brown has also been pressing online retailers to reconsider their radical bans on N95 masks. The problem, he said, could easily be solved by creating exceptions for government-certified masks.
“How can you spread conspiracy theories on Facebook, but can’t we sell N95 masks to millions of Americans who need them now?” Mr. Brown asked. “I can understand that Facebook doesn’t want to sell masks made by a guy in its garage, but these masks meet NIOSH’s strict guidelines.”
Bielamowicz, for example, discovered the benefits of a little public exposure. Last month, while he and his partner were considering whether to throw in the towel, a columnist for a local newspaper wrote about their tribulations. The company was immediately overwhelmed by requests from school nurses, cancer patients and key employees, many of whom said they had given up on finding N95 masks.
Within three days, the company had sold its entire stock of 250,000 masks.