U.S. Mask Makers Send An SOS

Manufacturers can’t sell their products, a sign of vulnerability in the PPE supply chain

- By Shira Stein

Even as the delta variant fuels a new wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S., some domestic manufacturers of N95s and surgical masks are struggling to stay in business. Several companies have stopped production of masks because of declining sales as people got vaccinated, state mask mandates ended, and the flow of cheaper foreign-made masks resumed. The American Mask Manufacturers Association (AMMA), a trade group that represents more than 20 smaller manufacturers, estimates that 5,000 workers have been laid off across its member companies. DemeTech Corp., based in Miami Lakes, Fla., has alone laid offabout 1,500 people, according to Luis Arguello Jr., the company’s vice president.

The mask makers’ plight is part of a larger problem that the U.S. government faces: ensuring a reliable domestic supply of protective gear for the next crisis. At the beginning of the pandemic, imports of personal protective equipment from overseas—which made up almost all of the PPE supply in the U.S.—were disrupted, and doctors and nurses often had to wear the same masks for weeks and plastic bags for protective gowns because of shortages.

Now the U.S. is “one problem away from being back where we were last spring,” says Megan Ranney, co-founder of Get Us PPE, an organization that provides PPE to communities in need at no cost. It is “incredibly shortsighted to have items of national security importance produced predominantly overseas.”