The Strategic National Stockpile may not have enough personal protective equipment left to supply to medical professionals across the country as the U.S. faces a surge in coronavirus cases, according to a Tuesday report from NBC News.
The stockpile and the Federal Emergency Management Agency reportedly have fewer than 900,000 gloves in their reserve. The agency had shipped 82.7 million gloves, only 30% of the amount local governments had requested, since the beginning of the pandemic.
Adm. John Polowczyk, a member of the White House coronavirus task force in charge of the supply chain, claimed that the situation is “just not that dire,” however. “I’m not going to pretend to tell you that supply and demand are perfectly aligned again, because there is still some residual hunting and pecking for a few things,” he said. “But supply and demand backorders are trending typically down, and we’re fundamentally in a volume place differently than we were in, say, March and then very early April."
