MMM 3M Company

By Rachael Levy and Alex Leary 

President Trump invoked a Korean War-era law to help manufacturers secure supplies needed to make ventilators and protective face masks, as the federal stockpile of the medical devices was running dangerously low amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Trump used the Defense Production Act in an effort to address the surging levels of patients in particularly hard-hit metro areas such as New York, New Orleans and Detroit. The federal government has distributed nearly half of its ventilators and has fewer than 10,000 still in hand -- as the nation is projected to need tens of thousands more in the next weeks ahead.

Governors in the hardest-hit states have been struggling to meet the demand for ventilators. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said Thursday the state had only enough ventilators in its stockpile for the next six days at the current rate of use. He said the state would provide financing to companies who need to make changes to begin manufacturing ventilators and other medical supplies.

Mr. Trump said his order would help manufacturers such as General Electric Co., Hill-Rom Holdings Inc., Medtronic PLC, ResMed Inc, Philips NV, and Vyaire Medical "secure the supplies they need to build ventilators needed to defeat the virus."

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for additional detail about the order.

Unknown is whether enough ventilators will be made available and in time for an expected surge in the next two weeks. Mr. Trump has said he wants manufacturers to send supplies to states and hospitals directly, bypassing the stockpile.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is in charge of coordinating the federal response, including transporting supplies to where they are needed. A FEMA spokeswoman said it wasn't known how many ventilators FEMA expected from companies. "When we have the numbers, we will share them," she said.

As of Monday, 7,140 ventilators had been sent out of the Strategic National Stockpile, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A FEMA spokeswoman said Wednesday in response to questions about the stockpile that the government has 9,404 ventilators. An additional 1,065 ventilators are available from the Defense Department, bringing the government's total number of ventilators to 10,469, the spokeswoman said.

That number represents about one-third of the roughly 32,000 ventilators that will be required by mid-April, the expected peak of the crisis, according to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The institute said it didn't know how many ventilators are already available.

The government's current cache wouldn't cover what New York state alone has projected it could require. Mr. Cuomo has said 37,000 ventilators may be needed there. The stockpile has provided the state 4,000.

In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order giving state police the authority to commandeer supplies such as ventilators from companies or other facilities to supply to hospitals. The state estimates it needs 1,650 more ventilators in coming weeks.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the New Orleans region could run out of ventilators by next Tuesday. So far, the state has distributed 450 ventilators since the crisis began, he said, including 150 that came this week from the national stockpile. He previously said he had requested 5,000 from the stockpile.

The state has been trying to procure thousands of ventilators from all over the world, he said. "The price has at least doubled on every ventilator that we're looking at from just where they were three to four weeks ago," Mr. Edwards, a Democrat, said at a news briefing Thursday.

On Wednesday, a FEMA spokeswoman said the stockpile had distributed 8,100 ventilators as of March 28 -- a figure that is roughly 1,000 units more than the Monday figure seen by the Journal. The spokeswoman's figures were also dated two days earlier. The spokeswoman said the data she provided was accurate and that the discrepancy could be the result of human error in a fast-moving crisis. "There's a lot of stuff flying," she said.

The Strategic National Stockpile, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, is a collection of warehouses across the country that hold emergency medical supplies. The locations of the warehouses are kept secret.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said nearly all of the protective gear, which doesn't include ventilators but is also needed by hospitals to treat coronavirus patients, had been depleted from the national stockpile. The president said companies are sending supplies, including ventilators, directly to states and bypassing the stockpile.

"When you make one, it doesn't get made in 15 minutes," Mr. Trump said. "A ventilator takes time to build."

Craig Fugate, FEMA's former head, said in an interview this week that the stockpiles "were never built, funded for a pandemic." The government's planning assumed companies would fill in gaps by completing large orders from the public sector, he said.

"There was so much emphasis on early indications to start that process of ordering supplies, and if necessary turning on the DPA," he said.

Mr. Trump on Thursday invoked the act to force 3M Co. to manufacture as many N-95 face masks as FEMA determines are needed.

A separate statement accompanying Mr. Trump's earlier DPA order on ventilator supply named General Electric Co., Hill-Rom Inc., Medtronic PLC, ResMed Inc., Koninklijke Philips NV, and Vyaire Medical Inc. as among the manufacturers of the devices.

GE said it has doubled its capacity of ventilator production and plans to double it again this quarter, and that it welcomes efforts by the administration to help boost output. Medtronic said it appreciated the order, and ResMed said it was pleased with the move and encouraged auto makers, aerospace-equipment producers and other manufacturers to help source or create more such components.

Peter Navarro, a White House adviser Mr. Trump appointed to oversee DPA policy, said the president on Friday would sign another order aimed at preventing some medical equipment from being exported. "We are going to crack down unmercifully," Mr. Navarro said.

The U.S. recently invoked the act and ordered General Motors Co. to assemble ventilators. GM has said it would start producing ventilators and eventually ramp up to 10,000 of the machines a month, although only a few thousand will be made in the first several weeks.

Ford Motor Co. said Monday it was working with GE to make 50,000 ventilators by early July at one of the auto maker's facilities in Michigan.

A spokeswoman for HHS said the department had been working with American companies since January to respond to the crisis "and will continue to coordinate closely with private suppliers and our federal partners to ensure that resources are going where they're needed." She didn't respond to a question about the discrepancy in ventilator figures.

As of Monday, the stockpile had distributed 11.6 million N-95 respirators, 26.4 million surgical masks, 5.3 million face shields, 4.4 million surgical gowns, 144,011 coveralls, 22.4 million gloves, 50 powered air-purifying respirators and 6,700 federal medical station beds, according to the internal figures reviewed by the Journal. The supplies had been sent to 63 undisclosed locations, including one tribe, according to the document.

FEMA assumed the stockpile "alone could not fulfill all requirements," an agency spokeswoman said.

--Scott Calvert contributed to this article.

Write to Rachael Levy at rachael.levy@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 02, 2020 19:08 ET (23:08 GMT)

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