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Trump Admin Ducked Massive Mask Manufacturing Plan in 2018: Report

The plan would have created millions of protective masks like those desperately needed by healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus today.

The Trump administration failed to move forward with an Obama-era plan to make millions of protective masks for healthcare workers, according to The Washington Post. A 2015 contract with medical manufacturer O&M Halyard called for the creation of a “one-of-a-kind, high-speed machine” that could hopefully produce at least 1.5 million N95 masks per day, to resolve the kind of protective equipment shortfall plaguing clinics and hospitals today. A Halyard employee told The Post the design was delivered on time and in-budget in 2018. But the machine was never created. An HHS spokesperson told the paper that no funding was available to build it, though The Post reports that the department responsible for the project had a nearly $1.5 billion budget for 2020.