Investigation: The federal government spent millions to ramp up mask readiness, but that isn’t helping now. The creation of a high-speed machine to make N95 masks in a pandemic and a reusable-masks project were aimed at alleviating shortages.
In September 2018, the Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic.
Halyard said Thursday in a statement that its work on the government contract was completed in September 2018. A spokeswoman declined to give additional details. Halyard promised in its 2015 statement to design a “one-of-a-kind, high-speed machine” to help federal health planners solve a production problem that had bedeviled them for years.
Asked whether the machine in its design could have accomplished the 1.5 million daily rate, Halyard said in a statement that it submitted a plan “to meet the requested specifications.” The HHS spokesperson said, “The project successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the approach and developed an initial design of a high speed mask manufacturing line.”No details of progress in the Halyard mask project appear to have been publicly reported by the government.
As of Friday morning, the spokesperson had not answered a question about whether the shortfall reflected a congressional decision or was a consequence of shifting priorities within HHS. In its appeal, Halyard says among other arguments that none of the clinics that sued had suffered any injuries from its gowns. The firm says that tens of millions of gowns have been sold without any reported infections.Stephen Devereaux, an attorney for Halyard in the case, said in an email, “The company does not comment on pending litigation.”
Avanos, not O&M Halyard, has responsibility for the surgical gown litigation, according to representatives of both companies. In September 2017, the Trump administration contracted with Applied Research Associates of Albuquerque to create a prototype of a “next-generation respirator,” as the masks are called, that could be sanitized and reused during public health emergencies.
Health officials and manufacturers, the panel said, should collaborate closely to create materials for an N95 mask that could be used again and again.
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